


Avoid the Nargles at All Costs

by KingdomFlameVIII



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Because these two fandoms, Harry Potter AU, M/M, are everything to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-01-21 08:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1544117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingdomFlameVIII/pseuds/KingdomFlameVIII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Harry Potter was out saving the Wizarding World, what were Axel and Roxas up to?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. YEAR ONE

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, friends! This one's actually a few years old, but due to my hard drive burning out without any backup, it's taken me quite a long time to complete. Now that I'm nearly at the end, though, I figured it'd be all right to put here. Eight chapters in all, one for each year, two for seven. Other characters from both worlds are included in the story but not really involved in the plot.

YEAR ONE

From the first moment he entered Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, Roxas Strife knew that he could not  _stand_ Axel Flynn.

Now, generally speaking, Roxas tried to get to know people before immediately deciding to hate their guts, but there was just something about Axel that’d made him _tick,_ in an irrational sort of way that he could never fully explain. He could've given you a dozen reasons right off the bat. Axel Flynn was arrogant, rude, cocky,  _way too tall_ …hey, nobody said these reasons were legitimate.

Roxas and Axel's first meeting took place on the Hogwarts Express; the first day of their  _very_  first year. Roxas' parents, who were both muggles, had driven him to King's Cross Station extra early, to be sure he didn't miss the train. He'd stared up at the scarlet vehicle in awe, eager to get inside as quickly as possible, so that he could go to a special school for people who were  _magical._

Given that, he was among the first to book a compartment. After setting all his things down, he went outside to say goodbye to his mum. When he returned, there were two other boys in his compartment. One was slightly chubby, with a round face and a nervous demeanor. He sat as far away as he could from the other boy, holding his quivering toad and looking like he was already regretting his choice of seating. The other boy was his polar opposite. He was thin, lanky, had a much narrower face, and carried an extremely confident aura. Much unlike the stiffened, nervous one, he was sprawled lazily across Roxas' seat, and was  _levitating Roxas’ things in midair._

Roxas didn't really mind that there was another kid in his seat. Those things happened, right? He didn't mind that nobody had asked his permission to join the compartment. He got it. Everybody had to sit somewhere, and he probably would have done the same thing if the only available compartment already had a trunk inside. What he _did_ mind was that the boy was  _still_ playing with his stuff, and he made no sign of stopping any time soon.

But Roxas' mother had brought him up to be polite, so he said, albeit rather stiffly, "Excuse me, could you please stop enchanting my trunk?" he threw in a nervous giggle. "The last thing I want is for it to fly away."

The boy with wild red hair didn't take his eyes away from the floating trunk as he replied in a heavy Scottish accent, "What? Don't you trust me?"

"Frankly I don't," said Roxas, folding his arms, "I don’t even know you, yet you think it’s all right to play with my things before asking, or even knowing my name. Won't you at least look at me while I'm talking to you!?"

Later, he would be told that once eye contact was broken, so was a spell. But prior to that, as far as he was concerned, the boy snapped his green eyes over to Roxas and unceremoniously dumped his trunk onto the floor. That was strike one. Then he curled his lips up and smirk at Roxas. Strike Two. "Frankly my dear, who says frankly anymore? You have  _got_ to relax. Look, I'll even scoot over so you don't have to sit next to tubby over there."

Strike three. Out.

"I'll pass," said Roxas coolly, sitting down next to the smaller, nervous kid. "Hi, I'm Roxas Strife."

"N-Neville Longbottom," he stuttered. Roxas reached his hand out in a friendly manner to shake hands with this Neville kid.

"And I'm Axel," said the redhead, even though he was obviously  _not_ invited to their conversation, "Got it memorized?"

"I'm trying my very hardest to forget," Roxas assured him.

The compartment door slid open and a short little girl with a bird's nest ponytail strode right in, dragging not one, but two trunks.

"Is it okay if I sit in here?" she asked. Before waiting for a confirmation she briskly heaved her luggage onto a higher rack and sat down next to Axel. "Oh, I do hope I haven't missed introductions. I'm Hermione Granger. I'm  _so_ excited to be going to Hogwarts. I'm muggle born, you know, so I thought I'd catch on a little bit extra early with my magic. Did you three know that they used to use portkeys to get to school instead of a train? I read it in Hogwarts, A History."

Axel sniggered. "Don't be so shy, now, Granger," he said sarcastically. Hermione turned scarlet and scooted away from him slightly.

"I'm muggle born too," Roxas piped up, earning a rather disapproving gaze from Axel. "I'm actually a little nervous. What about you two?" he said cordially to Neville, and Axel.

"Not a drop of muggle blood in my veins," said Axel smoothly.

Neville said quietly, "My family’s magical too."

An awkward silence settled over them and the train began to move. For the first several minutes of their trip, Hermione altered the color of her fingernail polish as if unable to decide; Neville sat quietly and stared out the window.

Axel and Roxas glared at one another.

Not directly, of course, that would have been extremely awkward. But Roxas knew that the redhead was giving him just as many dirty looks as he was giving the redhead. Occasionally their eyes would fall upon one another, and they'd quickly go back to ignoring each other.

It wasn't until a little old witch with a snack trolley came wobbling up that anybody spoke.

"Would you like anything, dearies?" she asked nicely.

Hermione shook her head, and Roxas followed suit. He hadn't gone to the trouble of returning to Gringotts to get his money switched out to wizard money. At the moment he was wishing he was; there was a 5 pound note in his pocket and his stomach was grumbling.

"Licorice wand," said Axel, pulling out a small jingling satchel, presumably full of wizard's gold. So he was rich too. What a snob.

"Two chocolate frogs, and a pumpkin pasty, please," said Neville. It was the most Roxas had heard from him since meeting him.

Axel was grinning that stupid grin again.

"That all for you,  _Longbottom_?" said Axel, smirking.

"No," Neville replied defensively. "The chocolate frogs are for Roxas."

"Huh?" said Roxas, "Y-you don't have to—"

Neville pushed the two little packages into his hands. "Just give me the cards, okay? Don't worry about it."

"Speaking of frogs," said Axel, pretending to check out his fingernails, "Where'd yours go off to?"

With each minute they had to spend searching the train for Neville's toad, Roxas' dislike for Axel grew more and more.

~o~

"Flynn, Axel," the woman called Professor McGonagall read the name off of her list of parchment paper. Roxas hadn't even been aware that Axel was a first year, like him. To have so much self-assuredness (and height) seemed more befitting to a more experienced student.

As the lanky boy with green eyes stepped fluidly up to the front of the room to be sorted, a pale, pointed faced boy standing next to Roxas spat, "Looks like one of those  _Weasleys_."

Roxas didn't know what a Weasley was, but he couldn't very well ask, as the boy had not been talking to him.

" _SLYTHERIN!"_

The table to the far right cheered, and the boy whose name Roxas did not know said, "Oh. I guess not."

Axel strode with a confident grin over to the cheering table at the far left of the room. Roxas was really beginning to despise that grin.

He cheered when both Hermione and Neville were sorted into Gryffindor. He'd been told good things about Gryffindor, and bad things about Slytherin. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't come to the school biased, but he was hoping to be placed anywhere but with Axel now.

After the pointed blonde boy ("Malfoy, Draco," Professor McGonagall had introduced him as) was also sorted into Slytherin, Roxas was starting to get pretty nervous. Soon he'd have to go up there, in front of the entire school, to be sorted. He'd never tried magic before, what if the hat told him to go home? He might die of shame.

The hall went quiet as a skinny, black haired boy whose name Roxas had missed stepped nervously onto the platform. He took  _forever._

After what seemed like an eternity, the sorting hat bellowed, "GRYFFINDOR!" for the entire hallway to hear.

There were very few people left to be sorted at all. Just him and five other people. Ten seconds later, Roxas was seated on the stool, and the sorting hat was placed upon his head.

"Hmm, a brilliant mind," the hat whispered into his ear, "Ravenclaw? No, too lazy." Roxas turned red in hopes that nobody but him had heard that, "There's much potential, perhaps Slytherin? Perhaps not. Too selfless for your own good. I'm thinking GRYFFINDOR!"

Roxas sighed in relief as the rest of Gryffindor house cheered for him. Gryffindor. That sounded pretty good. He shook hands with about a dozen people, upperclassmen and first years alike before he was properly seated.

He found out what a Weasley was a minute later, when a redhead boy (not quite so red as Axel's, though, this color was more orangey and natural) approached the hat and was instantly sorted into Gryffindor. He was one of the last boys to be sorted, and he and his numerous brothers did not stop chatting through the rest of the ceremony.

Finally, "Zabini, Blaise" was sorted into Slytherin, and it was over, and Roxas was famished. The headmaster, stood up, and crossed to the front of the staff's table.

"Welcome," he said, his arms spread wide, "Welcome, to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin the banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak! Thank you."

Roxas laughed and clapped along with everyone else. He'd heard amazing things about Albus Dumbledore, plus he was rather giddy after the sorting ceremony, he was still shaking. But his spirits were soon heightened tenfold as meals of all kind appeared on the golden plates. He cheerfully stuffed his face with all of his favorite dishes as he got to know the people he was seated near. Neville and Hermione were both seated farther down the table, near the Weasleys, so Roxas made conversation with people closer to them.

By the end of the feast, he had become acquainted with a brunette his size named Sora, a second-year named Hayner Finnigan, a boy who somewhat resembled Neville named Pence, first year; a tall boy with silver hair named Riku, who apparently was already friends with Sora, a blonde-haired girl named Naminé, who had a twin brother named Tidus.

As Dumbledore came back up to make his real speech (everyone was keener to listen with full bellies) Roxas stole a glance over to the Slytherin table. Axel was sitting there, ignoring Dumbledore completely and chatting idly with a mulleted first year whose name Roxas thought was Demyx Abbott, and a black haired girl with a rather pinched face.

Axel met eyes with him, flashed him a rather rude finger gesture, accompanied by a wink, and turned back to talk to his friends again. Anger boiled up at Axel's blatant disrespect toward the headmaster before he realized that he was ignoring Dumbledore too. So he turned his undivided attention back to the elderly wizard and he tried to put aside all thoughts of Axel Flynn.


	2. YEAR TWO

YEAR TWO

Things between Axel and Roxas did not get better throughout their first year at Hogwarts, in fact if anything, a very strong rivalry had been established between them. They'd both gotten detention multiple times for dueling in the hallways, throwing jinxes at one another in class, and what became collectively known among teachers and students as "banshee bantering" in the great hall during breakfast.

All in all, though, he really loved Hogwarts. He'd established very good friendships with his roommates (Sora, Riku, Pence, and Tidus) and many of the other Gryffindors. He learned countless things about the castle and its history, and, once practiced, he found he was very good at magic, Charms especially. By the end of his first year, he had beyond perfected his shielding charms (Axel had a very offensive fighting style), and many others.

By the time second year came around, Roxas could not have been more excited about returning to Hogwarts.

Halfway into the year, however, he was beginning to question that decision. Strange things were happening, very strange things. Aside from the usual oddities that occurred daily in the castle, magic had taken the turn to something sinister. All of this about the chamber of secrets; Roxas feared for himself. He had never particularly liked that Granger girl, but when he heard of her petrification, he began to get severely freaked out. What if they came for him next? He had no magical heritage to back him up whatsoever.

He didn't want to believe that Harry Potter was the "heir of Slytherin" like everyone around him seemed to think. For one, Harry  _was_ in Gryffindor, and though Roxas had never really intermingled with him and his crowd, they were generally on good terms. They'd swapped passively taken notes in Transfiguration and sat at the same lab table in potions during their first year. And, honestly, Harry didn't come across as a dark wizard at all to Roxas, unless he was around Draco Malfoy. The two of them shared a similar relationship to his and Axel's.

But as of late, he'd been avoiding the scarred teen like the plague. He didn't want to be next.

~o~

"Hey, Axel, did you hear? Another Gryffindor got attacked. I heard they're talking about closing the school."

Axel looked up to meet eyes with Saïx, a fifth year prefect who, like Harry Potter, had a scar on his face.

They were hanging about in the Slytherin common room, where he and Demyx had taken to sitting by the fireplace; Axel watching the flames, Demyx watching aquatic creatures of all types swimming in the murky waters just outside their windows. It took Axel a moment to even look up. Honestly, this wasn't even news anymore. Students and ghosts alike were being picked off one by one. But the word Gryffindor did pique a particular interest in Axel.

"D'you know who it was?"

Saïx smiled sadistically. "Roxas Strife."

~o~

Nobody in Slytherin knew that Axel Flynn visited Roxas Strife in the hospital wing. Nobody in Gryffindor knew, either. In fact, Axel himself often questioned his motives for spending his evenings sitting next to Roxas, who was frozen stone cold, his eyes wide open in fear. They weren't friends. They were far from friends. Axel didn't even like him.

Well, that wasn't completely true.

Even though Roxas had his own special way of getting on Axel's nerves that nobody else could quite replicate; even though he was a dense, mudblood little Gryffindor, Axel secretly had a deep admiration for him. He was brave, and he was talented, and he wasn't afraid of anything. Except being petrified, apparently. He fancied the expression Roxas would probably make if he ever found out that Axel had seen him, on multiple occasions, with the look of vulnerability and distress he currently wore. It was the only time Axel had ever seen it in any kind of fear. And now he was frozen that way.

It scared him, honestly. It made him want Roxas to wake up. He knew the blonde was comatose, but it made him very uncomfortable to see him _looking_ so terrified. Even with that aside, he missed the daily action he got from being around Roxas. That probably made him the world's biggest asshole, since he was sure that Roxas didn't have nearly as much fun fighting with him as he did fighting Roxas. But he couldn't help himself. It was just so fun making him tick.

"What are  _you_ doing here?"

Axel snapped his head around to see Sora heading over to where Roxas lay, carrying an assortment of Bertie Bot’s Every Flavor Beans.

He stood up immediately. "I—uh…"

Sora smirked. "Well, well, well, if it isn't our little Slytherin friend. Not feeling guilty for putting him here, are you?"

Axel scoffed. "Right. I'm twelve years old and I can hardly turn a toothpick into a pin, but somehow I know how to curse a whole number of people  _so_ badly that even old Dumbledore can't put them right? Maybe they shoulda put you in Hufflepuff, spikey."

"I was kidding," Sora added quietly. "So what  _are_ you doing here, then?"

That, Axel didn’t have a snarky reply to. He didn’t even know the reason himself.

"I'm not here," he hissed, drawing his wand and pointing it menacingly towards Sora, "And if anybody  _accuses_ me of having been here, I will not rest until I've properly learned  _Incendium_ and used it on you."

"You don't scare me, Flynn," said Sora, shaking his head with a little smile. "But your little secret's safe with me. I hope you know this gives me license to mock you for the rest of eternity, though. I have a feeling I'll be seeing you around."

Axel felt his face heat up as he stormed away from the hospital wing. This was gonna be a  _huge_ problem. Houses don't intermingle,  _especially_ not Gryffindor and Slytherin. If anyone found out about this, he would be in deep shit with pretty much everybody.

Before he really knew he'd made a conscious decision, he burst through the main entrance, not knowing or caring if any teachers saw him. He strode behind the giant's hut, into the Forbidden Forest. It wasn't his first visit. He knew he could always come here if he wanted to be alone.

" _Come on, Fang, we're going for a walk._ "

He froze. Apparently he was mistaken.

"What are  _you_ doing in here?"

The question, aimed at him for the second time that night, came from yet another Gryffindor.

"I could ask you the same question, Potter," he spat. Personally, he didn't have a problem with the Boy Who Lived. But as a general oath to Slytherin, he was naturally expected to give him a hard time. He had his Weasley friend with him, and they had taken Hagrid's dog.

"It's none of your business," said Harry flatly. Ron nodded along with him, but he didn't seem too happy to be there.

Axel shrugged. "Don't bother me, then, and I won't bother you."

Long after Harry and Ron disappeared from sight, Axel lingered around the outskirts of the forest, seating himself on a rather thick tree root. He wouldn't have to worry about being caught by the giant; they took him away days ago, accusing him of being the attacker. Personally, Axel didn't think he had the brains to do the job, but that was just his opinion.

Hours later, he made to go back to the castle, taking no notice of the Ford Anglia that flew a few dozen meters above his head.

~o~

"Roxas? Roxas can you hear me? Can you blink for me?"

He opened his eyes all the way to see Madam Pomfrey standing over him, with a wooden bowl of a rather foul-looking potion. Judging by the putrid taste in his mouth, she'd just made him drink it. But that wasn't important. Why was he in the hospital wing to begin with? How long had he been there?

Suddenly everything came back to him. He'd gone for a walk, near the Black Lake, by himself. There was a splash in the water, and the last thing he could remember was a giant snake, at  _least_ as thick as a tree trunk, swimming about a foot under the water. It came closer and close to where he was standing; it made a beeline for him, as a matter of fact. And then the last thing he could remember was its glowing yellow eyes, slowly becoming visible underneath the foggy surface.

"Madam Pomfrey!" he shouted, sitting up much too fast for her liking, "It wasn't a person, it was a snake! A snake attacked me! At least, I think it did…"

"Lay  _down_ , my boy," she ordered harshly. "The heir of Slytherin has been caught and accounted for, and the  _snake_ has been put to death. You can relax, boy, and let me fix you up, so I can get you to the feast! See for yourself, all the rest of the students are rousing!"

Roxas looked round to see half a dozen other muggleborns, including Nearly Headless Nick, stretching, walking around, and some nibbling on little treats from their admirers. He looked to his own bedside table to discover at least two dozen chocolate frogs.

He gazed at the pile in awe. "Who…?"

"Most of them are from your little redheaded friend," said Madam Pomfrey shortly. "Drink this," she snapped, pushing a glass of icy pumpkin juice towards him.

He ignored her. Redheaded friend? He didn't have any redheaded friends…


	3. YEAR THREE

Roxas crept through the secret passageway behind the statue of a one-eyed witch. Being the lazy teenager that he was, he'd forgotten to get his permission slip to go to Hogsmeade signed by his parents. Not that he was  _that desperate_ to get to Hogsmeade, but he did have some Christmas shopping to do, and that aside, he wanted to see what the place was like.

Fortunately for him, around Halloween, during the first class trip to the village, he'd been hanging around the third floor corridor and happened to notice the Weasley twins disappear behind the aforementioned statue, and later, Roxas decided to check it out for himself. The castle was full of secret passages, but before then, he'd never found one that lead completely  _out_ of the castle before. Minutes after that, he was heading back, sucking on a sugar quill and silently thanking Fred and George Weasley for showing him this special treat.

Back in the present time, he was emerging from the passage and creeping up the stairs toward the main shop. It was packed full of students, as always, so nobody even  _noticed_ Roxas slip into the throng. After twenty minutes of standing in line, he had a Honeydukes bag in hand, full of gifts for all of his roommates.

He planned to head over to the Three Broomsticks next, having heard that the butterbeer is fantastic, but he didn't know his way around, nor did he have anyone with him that knew  _their_ way around. Somehow he found himself in an alleyway, far off the beaten path. A battered sign reading "The Hog's Head" was visible, but Roxas didn't want to chance going on there. He'd heard that some pretty dodgy folks liked to hang out in there.

Then, he saw it, and decided  _very_ quickly that he'd much rather deal with whatever warlocks, vampires, or banshees the Hog's Head had to offer. Hovering at the end of the alleyway, was one of those creatures, the creatures Professor Dumbledore had warned all of the students about. The creatures that, given the opportunity, would suck out your soul. Dementors.

He looked back behind him quickly, trying to mentally calculate whether he could make it out of the alley if the dementor decided to come after him. He'd seen just how fast they could go during last week's Quidditch match, and honestly, it didn't look like he had a chance. He had to try, though, and he had to do it fast. He could feel his insides tensing up and weakening already, as though someone were pouring a glass of ice cold water into his chest.

It didn't appear as though the creature had noticed his presence yet, so he turned on his heel and ran, as fast as he could. In a rush of icy air he felt that the monster knew he was there. Hopelessness leaked into his very pores. The dementor was going to catch him, and there was nothing he could do about it. They were going to take him; they were going to take his soul. He wasn't ever going to go back to Hogwarts.

Ironically, as he was thinking these horrible thoughts (probably brought on by the creature itself) he tripped and fell to the ground. He felt the creature swooping over him.

He didn't know why he didn't scream. Maybe it was because he couldn't find his voice. Maybe it was because in his last moments of life, he didn't want to behave so cowardly. He wouldn't show fear or defeat to this creature. He shut his eyes tightly and tried as best he could to cover up his face as the dementor began to lower its hood.

Suddenly, a warm blast came out of nowhere. Roxas was surrounded by a bright light, a light that carried hope, and strength. Despite the intensity of the light, he opened his eyes widely in search of the source. What he saw instead was a liquid-y looking silver dragon, whizzing through the narrow street and blasting the dementor away from Roxas.

A large hand clamped down on his upper arm and started yanking him up. "Get up, idiot, before it comes back!"

Roxas was sure he recognized the voice, but at the moment he was too shaken to try identifying it. The guy was wearing a black cloak, anyway, and the hood was drawn up over his face. If Roxas didn't feel the body heat eradiating from his hands, he might have mistaken him for a dementor.

He couldn't really walk right, so he let himself be supported by the stranger, until he was pushed onto a barstool in the Hog's Head.

"Are you stupid or something?" the hooded guy demanded, "Why would you go down there by yourself in the first place?"

Ah. Roxas recognized that voice.

Shit. Roxas recognized that voice.

He knew before his rescuer took his hood down, that his rescuer was Axel.

"I got  _lost_ _,_ " he spat. "Why were yo _u_  over here? Huh?"

Axel rolled his eyes. "You're a handful, you know that? I was having a drink with Aberforth," he gestured towards the bartender, "Me n' him go way back. Hey Abs, could you get a butterbeer for the kid?"

"Psh, kid," Roxas grumbled, "We're the same age."

Axel didn't respond, he instead shoved a package wrapped in gold foil under Roxas nose. "Honeydukes chocolate," he said. "Eat it. I learned from Lupin that it helps."

"I have my own," Roxas snapped, reaching into his plastic baggy.

"Jeez, you'd think I'm trying to poison you or something," Axel mumbled, putting the candy bar back into his coat pocket.

"Well, gee, I wonder what would evermake me think that!" said Roxas disgruntledly.

He didn't touch the butterbeer Aberforth gave him. He knew that by this point he was being unnecessarily nasty to Axel, given the redhead had probably just saved his life. But that fact just made it all the worse. Now he was indebtedto him.

"You've eaten plenty of my chocolate in the past," Axel murmured in an undertone, just barely loud enough for Roxas to hear.

"What did you say?"

He didn't just say what Roxas thought he just said, did he?

"N-nothing," Axel stuttered. "You know what? Forget it," he threw his hands up in the air. "Drink's on me, you're fucking welcome, have a nice day."

He tossed a galleon onto the counter, turned on his heel, and left the bar, leaving Roxas feeling a bit whiplashed. He started feeling a little bit guilty for treating Axel the way he did. Because today, for all intents and purposes, they weren't enemies. Sure, he might have called him stupid, idiot, whatever else, but the edge on his voice hadn't come from hatred. It had come from desperation, and from fear. He was starting to think that Axel didn't hate him at all.

He suspected that he didn't hate Axel so much anymore, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Fact: In the original story, I had planned for Axel to blow him in the alley. But it occurred to me that they’re only like, thirteen in this chapter, and that is just too young. Plus it wouldn’t have added up with what I wanted to do with fourth year. So I threw in a dementor instead.


	4. YEAR FOUR

Axel had boarded the Hogwarts Express on the first day of their fourth year with two tear drop shaped tattoos underneath his eyes. Roxas had pretended not to notice.

It was hard to pretend not to notice when Axel had so kindly strode into  _his_  compartment, much like the time they first met, and plopped down right across from him. Sora, who was also inhabiting the compartment, sniggered to himself and looked at his feet. Roxas could swear the brunette knew something about Axel that he didn't.

Hayner, whom Axel had sat down next to, scoffed importantly, and scooted a few inches away.

"What?" said Axel, looking round at them all, "Do I smell or something?"

Roxas shut his eyes and tried his very best not to curse Axel with a stinging jinx. "Oh, I don't know, Axel. Maybe you've just spent the  _last_ three years of our lives tormenting us? And that aside, isn't it against Slytherin code to talk to an 'outsider?' From what I understand, your superior asses are too  _superior_ to allow your superiority to sink down into the  _lower class_ houses."

"It was never put in writing," said Axel with ease. Why was he here? It made Roxas very uncomfortable, to say the least. Not only did he not like the redhead, but it was also impossible for him to relax, not knowing what kind of motives Axel had or when he intended to strike.

A sharp rapping sounded through the glass door to the compartment; it looked as though Axel's little Slytherin friends were flagging him down.

" _Hey, Axel, what are you doing in there?"_ one of the particularly stupider ones called out.

Axel didn't take his eye off Roxas'.

"Hang on, Montague, I'll be out in a second," he replied.

"Don't keep them waiting on our account," said Hayner, making absolutely no attempt to disguise his distaste for Axel's presence.

Axel, looking unperturbed, stood up fluidly. "Let's settle the score," he proclaimed, spreading his arms, "For good. We'll settle our differences like men. Meet me out at the Quidditch field, Saturday night, ten o'clock. Don't be late."

"Why would you want to meet me on the Quidditch field," Roxas asked, highly suspicious. Usually they just dueled in the hallways. He supposed there were less things to hurt outside, but—

"So we can play Quidditch, of course," Axel replied.

~o~

"All right, Roxas? I actually thought you weren't gonna come."

"Well, it's not like you stuck around long enough for me to refuse," Roxas replied disgruntledly, trudging up with field with his Cleansweep Six. This was not the first, but the eighth time this year he'd come to play against Axel. If he didn't know any better, he'd say Axel was having fun with it. With November fast coming to a close, Roxas decided, with his teeth chattering, that he'd had enough of this foolishness.

He was backed by Sora and Seamus Finnigan, Hayner's younger brother, and a notably better Quidditch player. Axel was flanked by Montague, the captain of the Slytherin team, and by his friend Demyx, with the mullet. Roxas was a pretty decent player, but he couldn't be much of a match for Montague. No, it didn't matter, he had to do it.

"I've a proposition for you, Axel," he said boldly.

Demyx sniggered. That was okay; he probably wasn't smart enough to know what proposition meant.

Axel, looking rather amused himself, said, "All right, I'll humor you."

"Let's raise the stakes a little bit, here," said Roxas. "If Gryffindor wins, this is our last match. No rematches, no final calls. Just this."

He could hear murmurs all around from other people that had shown up to watch. With the Triwizard Tournament going on and no official Quidditch this year, Roxas and Axel's teams had become something of an underground sporting event. Students knew, go to the Quidditch pitch on the first and third Saturday of the month to catch a free show. He felt slightly guilty for just shutting down and calling it quits on them, but Roxas knew that Gryffindor's real team would probably step in soon to rectify that; in fact the blonde often wondered why they hadn't already.

Axel looked unaffected, in fact he and his two teammates burst into laughter as though Roxas had just said the funniest thing in the world. Something every Slytherin had in common, Roxas realized, was an array of inside jokes against Gryffindors that could be used for almost every occasion. It pissed him off that they never took him seriously.

"You're such a  _good_ boy," said Axel, "Never breaking the rules, always want to please everyone else. You never live life on the  _edge._ You're always so afraid to cause a  _rumble_. Shake people up. Start a  _fire._  Let's say I call it a deal. You win, then we don't play anymore. What about when  _I_ win?"

Roxas didn't like the sound of this. This could not end well.

"Suppose you did?" he offered weakly. He knew he'd have to let Axel place his own stakes, and there was no telling what he'd do with that kind of power.

A wolfish grin spread across the redhead's features. "If Slytherin wins, Blondie, then you have to go to the Yule Ball with me."

" _What?!"_

Slytherins all around were laughing at him, and the Gryffindors were exchanging looks. Go to the Yule Ball? With… Axel?

"It's your call, man," said Seamus, "We're not the ones that'll have to go out with firecrotch if we lose."

"You guys wanted out, too," Roxas reasoned.

Sora and Seamus exchanged looks. "Yeah, but, it's not like we're bound by any kind of code to even play  _this_ match. We could throw it, then just not show up for another one," said Sora. They both looked over to where Axel and his team were sharing a hearty laugh about something or another; most likely humor at Roxas' expense.

"No way," said Roxas, "Nowhere in the bargain does it say that if we lose, we still have to play the next match. I can handle one date; I'd rather risk _that_ than walk out of here undignified. I don't know if you noticed," he gestured over to the stands, where the Weasley twins were no doubt collecting bets, "But it would be pretty shitty of us to not play this round. I'd rather walk out of here, either having won or lost, than walk out of here having been too afraid to play at all."

Sora smiled at him and nodded firmly. He and Seamus both held their hands out, one on top of the other. Roxas placed his hand atop the pile.

"On three then… one, two, three, GO GO GRYFFINDOR!"

~o~

"My, don't you look lovely this evening."

Rumor had been swirling about the castle during the weeks leading up to Christmas Eve that Axel Flynn would be taking Roxas Strife to the Yule Ball, but very few people knew for certain if that were true or not. Some of the stories had gotten so ludicrous that any true knowledge behind them was negligible. Roxas heard one third-year saying that he was expected to show up in women's dress robes, while he heard another saying that Axel had to threaten him with a Hungarian Horntail in order for him to agree.

He felt dozens of pairs of eyes on him as he allowed himself to be escorted into the Entrance Hall by none other than Axel himself, who, as much as Roxas hated to admit it, looked rather dashing in his emerald green dress robes. It looked as though he had tamed his hair for the occasion, and had swept it all back into a neat little ponytail. Roxas, on the other hand, had not done much in his attempts to flatten his perpetually messy do. It didn't feel like a special occasion to him. In fact he'd been rather dreading it.

"Oh  _come on,_  Roxy, you can't ignore me for the  _whole_ evening," said Axel, sounding only slightly disappointed underneath his thick layer of sarcasm.

"Don't call me Roxy," Roxas snapped.

"He speaks!" the redhead called delightedly, throwing his free arm up in the air. Roxas did not crack a smile. There was nothing even  _remotely_ funny or happy about this situation. He was linking arms with his arch enemy instead of the ridiculously attractive Beauxbatons girl who had asked him (in rather spotty English, admittedly) to go with him last week. But no, he was bound by code of honor to spend all night with this…  _buffoon._ How humiliating. He was starting to regret not just walking away from the playing field.

Despite the humility of the situation, Roxas walked with his head held high. Yeah, he totally threw that Quidditch match on purpose.

They sat at their table quietly as the four Champions entered the Great Hall with their dates; Fleur Delacour with Roger Davies, who looked rather plain with her standing in comparison, Viktor Krum with Hermione Granger, Cedric Diggory with Cho Chang, who looked perfectly at home in the spotlight, and lastly, Harry Potter with Parvati Patil. Roxas smirked to himself, with the knowledge that somewhere in the Hall, Ron Weasley was sitting with Padma Patil.

One by one, couples began to approach the dance floor, some spiraling with exuberant skill, others swaying back and forth awkwardly. Regardless, everyone, Hogwarts and otherwise, seemed to be having a good time, and the Great Hall was magnificent.

Axel cleared his throat. "Might I have one dance?" he asked politely.

Roxas supposed there was no getting out of it; the ball ran until midnight. Better to get it out of the way now, while the floor was crowded with flocks of witches and wizards, all eager to begin dancing early. In his simple black dress robes, Roxas didn't think he would be all that conspicuous, so he nodded stiffly. Axel had promised when the match was over that he'd be on his best behavior and so far, he'd kept that promise.

 _Nobody is looking at you,_ Roxas told himself as Axel began to spin him around,  _See? Plenty of girls are dancing together, there's absolutely nothing weird about this. The entire Triwizard Tournament thingy is about intermingling, right? Yeah, you're fine._

He knew it was no use, since the only people  _not_ watching them were those from other schools. So, reluctantly, he started focusing more on the dancing aspect. The Weird Sisters were playing some kind of waltz, a peculiar tune for a grunge band. Honestly Roxas had no clue what he was doing. Fortunately, Axel was an excellent dancer (damn him), and with him leading, it wasn't all that difficult for Roxas to keep up.

When the slower songs came to a close, Roxas figured he'd better get off the dance floor as quickly as possible before the mosh pits started to form.

As soon as he tried steering them away, however, Axel pleaded, "Oh wait, Rox, I love this song!"

"I'm just going to sit over there!" Roxas shouted back (the music was very loud). He pointed over to an empty table near the Christmas tree, "Just come find me when you're done."

Axel gave him a pouty kind of look, but quickly returned to shamelessly dancing solo. Once Roxas was alone, he took advantage of this new opportunity to collect himself.

"Okay, don't panic," he muttered aloud. Who would hear him over the music anyway? "It was just  _dancing_ for goodness' sake. So you're here with a Slytherin. So you're here with  _Axel._ It's not the end of the world. So, maybe you may or may not have just been having fun. With Axel… who  _I just don't fucking get!"_

He pounded the table with his fist, so utterly confused. He peeked into the throng to see Axel looking like he was having the time of his life, just sporadically throwing his hips around in an even crazier fashion than that Luna girl from Ravenclaw. Roxas had to remind himself that the redhead was only doing this to humiliate him, to keep himself from considering the possibility that maybe they could be friends.

~o~

"Hey Roxas, this seat taken?"

Axel quickly sat down anyway before the blonde could insist otherwise. In all honesty, he had no idea what he was doing, or why he was doing it. But it was too late to change his mind now; seating around the Black Lake was filling up quick, in preparation for the second task. Axel ignored the curious looks he was getting from Draco Malfoy and pretended not to hear his other friends flagging him down.

"I suppose it is now," Roxas grumbled. Youch. While he'd never exactly hidden his dislike for Axel, Axel never truly wanted to believe that that dislike was personal. Was mere playful banter on his part actually genuine hatred on Roxas'? That was never his intention.

"Why d'you even reckon they're having us watch this?" he asked conversationally, "We won't be able to see a damn thing."

Roxas looked at him spitefully before replying, "I don't know, but I'm not gonna complain about it, since it got us out of class—hey, where's Harry?"

Axel looked down to see that three Champions from three schools were indeed lined up at the bank near the judges' table, but Harry Potter was missing. A curious kid, Potter was. While Axel hadn't worn the  _Potter Stinks_ badge like the rest of the kids in his year, he did find Potter a bit overrated. Trouble seemed to find him wherever he went, yes, but it always seemed like he was just barely scraping through it all. But at least Harry never claimed otherwise, so Axel supposed he had some respect for him.

But today, the fourth Champion was nowhere to be found until minutes before nine-thirty, when the task was set to start. He came sprinted down the lawn just as soon as Ludo Bagman modified his voice for the occasion.

"Well, all our champions are ready for the second task, which will start on my whistle. The have precisely an hour to recover what has been taken from them. On the count of three, then. One… two…  _three!_ "

The whistle echoed shrilly in the cold, still air; the stands erupted with cheers and applause, so much was the enthusiasm that Axel could hardly tell what was going on. Krum looked like he was turning into some kind of shark, while Cedric and Fleur had already disappeared into the murky waters. Meanwhile Harry… was just standing there. Laughter was beginning to erupt throughout the audience when Harry suddenly dropped himself into the lake, and it became clear to Axel exactly how everyone intended to watch.

Someone's wand—most likely Bagman's—was projecting an four images, collectively, out on the lake for everyone to see, each featuring one of the four champions. Fleur and Cedric both appeared to have glass fishbowls over their heads, presumably supplying air, while Potter looked rather odd, and fishy, almost as though he'd become a merman himself.

Suddenly, on Krum's end of the projection, the Giant Squid emerged, startling Axel greatly, along with the rest of the crowd's. It wasn't as though Axel had never seen it before; the windows in the Slytherin quarters looked out into the depths of the lake, so the squid's appearance really wasn't that uncommon for him. But seeing it that up close and personal… let's just say it surprised him. He wasn't  _scared,_ just surprised. Enough to reflexively clutch Roxas by the wrist. Actually, the area he had grabbed was dangerously close to his hand. So dangerously close that the common eye would probably mistake them for holding hands. Ah, who was he kidding? Axel missed his wrist completely.

As soon as he became aware of this screw up, he let go and mumbled a swift apology. The squid was gone, and Moaning Myrtle was hanging out on Potter's end of the spectrum. Apparently she was giving him directions; was that even legal? Meanwhile, Fleur Delacour was fast approaching the surface, a pile of Grindylows on her flanks. Silly girl, didn't she know that a simple repelling charm could get rid of them? He guessed they didn't cover loch-lurkers in the region of Beauxbatons. Good. That gave Hogwarts a definite advantage. He wondered if Durmstrang had a modified curriculum as well.

He couldn't stop thinking about Roxas' hands. They were soft to the touch, and if he didn't know any better, he'd say that they clutched back at his. Perhaps he was simply shocked too? Axel had to know. Because for quite a while now, he was embarrassed to say he had the biggest crush on Roxas. Roxas! A stupid, hard-headed mudblood! A shallow Gryffindor! A—an extremely attractive, talented wizard.

Damn it, he was way past crushing.

Tentatively, he reached out again, only to  _touch,_ not to take. He passed it off as a mere change in sitting position. To his dismay, Roxas moved said hand down to scratch his ankle. When his arm came back up, he crossed it over the other one. Sure, it looked casual enough, but the message was clear.  _Keep your hands off me, weirdo._

~o~

"Did you know him?"

Roxas whipped around to see Axel standing right behind him. He'd thought he'd been so sneaky, creeping away from the crowd. They were all too busy staring at the body—Cedric's body, which arrived out in the open for everyone to see, attached to Harry Potter. He hadn't known Cedric, but he'd never seen a dead body before. He didn't think anybody would notice if he left the area; many others were fleeing the scene. While they'd gone back to the castle, he chose instead to approach a young willow tree (one that  _didn't_ attack anything that moved) and cry alone.

Or so he thought.

"I—I didn't know him  _well_ ," he said, trying not to sniffle so conspicuously, "But it's overwhelming, you know? He took Ancient Runes with me this year— guess divination wasn't his thing—but it's just unbelievable to think that he's  _never_ going to sit in that chair again. He's not coming back next year. A-and, I don't know, we weren't  _friends,_ but he used to let me borrow his n-notes—"

He knew it wasn't silly to cry in a situation like this, but given he'd been hardwired to consider Axel an enemy by now, he  _really_ didn't want the redhead seeing tears flowing so freely.

"W-why are you here?" he questioned shakily. It was too late to stop Axel from seeing the few tears he couldn't keep bottled up, but he knew that a full scale meltdown probably wasn't too far behind. He  _definitely_ didn't want anyone to see that.

Axel stepped forward, with a sort of pained expression on his face. "I'm here because I care about a friend."

Roxas was so shocked he couldn't even react when Axel took yet another step forward and embraced him. Having someone's arms around him, even if they were Axel's, made him feel protected and free of judgment. This time when the tears came, they were of his own accord. His body shook with sobs and he pressed his face against Axel's chest.

"Guess I missed the memo," said Roxas sheepishly, after he had calmed down a little.  _This is weird_ , he told himself,  _remember? What the heck is gonna happen now?_

"I know you don't really like me all the much, Rox, but—"

"It's okay," Roxas cut him off. "I'm sorry I'm so mean to you. I guess I've just had this stupid idea in my head this whole time that you deserve it. But now that I think about it, maybe I was the one being an asshole this whole time. We can be friends, Axel."

He didn't mean to put emphasis on the word 'friend,' but by the almost disappointed look on Axel's face, he knew that the word bore significance to him. Great.

When he boarded the Hogwarts Express at eleven years old, he never imagined in a million years that he would have to friend zone Axel Flynn.


	5. YEAR FIVE

Surprised looks followed Roxas wherever he went. That is, as long as Axel was with him. He was sure that, in a million years, nobody at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry expected Roxas Strife and Axel Flynn to become friends. Except maybe Sora, whose reaction didn't extend past a small chuckle when Roxas disgruntledly told him that he'd have to be hanging out with the redhead over the holidays. But otherwise, all the way up through the winter holidays, he received strange (and sometimes threatening) looks from Gryffindors and Slytherins alike.

Axel never seemed to mind, but socially, their relationship was anything but easy. During the summer holidays, when they weren't separated into houses, it was a cinch to just hang out and be who they liked. But In school, everything was wacked. Roxas hadn't even realized the  _extent_ of the sheer rivalry between their houses until that year. Slytherins were absolutely  _forbidden_ to allow anyone other than their own into the common room. Which was true of all the others, but no one  _really_ followed it. Dining tables were all separated, as were sides of any given classroom.

Another thing which kept them apart that particularly made Axel angry was the D.A: Dumbledore's Army. Slytherins were expressly forbidden, in fear of double agents from Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad. Regardless of how many times the redhead had begged and reasoned with Roxas to disclose information about them, insisting his cause was the same as the rest of theirs, Roxas kept tight-lipped about it, agreeing only the privately share with Axel what he'd learned during the meetings, but nothing more.

It wasn't that Roxas didn't  _want_  Axel to join, and he wished his friend knew that. It was just the ridiculous amount of trouble  _he'd_ had to go through to join just for being  _friends_ with a Slytherin. It was Granger that cut off Ron Weasley's little rant and agreed with a sinister little smile that Roxas could join, but if he got any ideas, they would know. Roxas didn't put it past Hermione to find a way; her spells were spectacular.

Aside from hanging out with Axel, D.A. meetings were pretty much the highlight of Roxas' life. School was boring, now that Umbridge had messed with the entire system; even Axel had confided that he didn't understand what the rest of his friends saw in her reign of terror.

When the Christmas holiday came to a close and Axel and Roxas returned to school (having gone to Axel's over break) Harry began teaching them how to conjure Patronus charms.

"This is really advanced stuff you guys, beyond the O.W.L.s, this is fantastic!" Harry had encouraged during their first Patronus lesson; apparently more would come. "Before the incantation you have to think of a really,  _really_ good memory, your favorite in the world. Full bodied patronuses are the most powerful, but if you're just getting little wisps of smoke, that's good too."

Roxas shut his eyes tightly for what seemed to be the millionth time that lesson, thinking about Christmas at home back with the folks, back when he didn't know he was a wizard. He thought of his Gran's big open fireplace, where they'd make Christmas s'mores or eat cookies. He thought about the way his Auntie Clara's house smelled; it was the only time of year they visited her at home.

So far these memories were only bringing about puffs of white vapor from Roxas' wand, but when Harry approached, he smiled approvingly and moved on to help Neville Longbottom, whose spellwork had improved drastically since the start of the meetings.

Roxas shut his eyes and tried again, determined to see which animal his patronus took the shape of. He tried his childhood Christmases again, except this time the old memories, as they often do, became intermingled with new ones. It wasn't until Axel came into the picture that a shining silver fox issued from his wand and trotted gracefully around the room. It drew everyone's eyes; Roxas was only the second—succeeding Harry and Ginny Weasley—to produce an animal.

Everyone stood silently for a moment until it vanished, and then he was given a small applause and cheers of encouragement from everybody. He smiled and thanked them all, but inside, he was freaking out a bit. The tremendous difference Axel had made to the strength of the spell did not go unnoticed, and Roxas couldn't help but think  _why?_  Was Axel really his happiest memory? That sounded so… queer.

 _Calm down,_ Roxas told himself with a small shake of the head. He was probably only thinking that way because rumors were already flying around Hogwarts that he and Axel were fags, and now it was getting inside his head.  _I know that we're just friends, and that's all that matters_ _._

He remembered Axel's patronus in the third year; a dragon. It was a long, serpentine Eastern dragon with no wings, moving fluently through the air to spit warm fire at the dementor, charging it away. Roxas had always considered Axel's magical talents negligible, even after they became friends. How did he learn such advanced magic in the third year? Roxas found himself growing more and more curious about what  _his_ special memory was.

He remained distracted and unable to produce even smoke for over ten minutes afterwards, so he left the room of requirement just in time to see a tiny little house-elf with large green eyes walk in.

~o~

"So whatcha got for me today?"

Standing in the one tiny room on the first floor of the shrieking shack were Axel and Roxas, where they congregated after almost every D.A. meeting for Roxas to do his best to teach Axel everything Harry had taught him.

"We started Patronus Charms," said Roxas, who'd found himself distracted for pretty much the rest of the day.

Axel cracked a smirk and said, "No need."

He aggressively snapped, “ _Expecto Patronum!_ ” and jabbed his wand into thin air, and out of if burst the same dragon Roxas had seen two years ago, in all of its fluidy silvery glory. It slithered through the air and breathed fire at nothing for about twenty seconds, before vanishing into the air from whence it came. Axel was looking rather pleased with himself.

"Who taught you?" Roxas wondered aloud.

Axel sat down and shrugged. "When the dementors came onto the train in our third year, they really freaked me out. I mean they  _really_ freaked me out. I started having nightmares about them. So I took  _Standard Book of Spells, Grade Six_ out of the library and looked up the theory. I practiced in the dormitories for like a month straight before I got it right."

"What memory worked for you?" Roxas blurted before he could stop himself.

Axel, oddly, went slightly maroon. "I tried tons," he said, awkwardly rocking back and forth on his toes, "I thought about my mum, about my friends back at home, about playing Quidditch. None of them worked. Then I thought about setting fire to stuff—you know how much I like doing that."

Roxas nodded, and Axel kept going.

"So that had me making those little clouds, the ones that look like  _Protego,"_ he explained, "And then I got kinda bored, doing that over and over again, and thinking about fire got me thinking about that time that we were raising fire newts in Care of Magical Creaturesclass, and one of them spit at you, and singed your eyebrows off." Axel laughed just recalling the memory, "And that's when the dragon came out. I thought about the time when we accidentally turned the statues of Barnabus the Smarmy into an ice sculpture while dueling, and that worked too."

Axel was looking anywhere but at Roxas now. "Turns out, Rox, that you're my happy memory."

Roxas felt rooted to the spot. He didn't know whether he should be flattered or freaked out. Well, he was certainly freaked out because Axel's story was basically  _identical_ to his. But how could that be? They didn't really hit it off until fourth year, he thought. There was a  _reason_ that statue turned into ice, because they were  _enemies_ _._ Getting detention was a weekly occurrence for them at _best._ So how could Roxas have been Axel's favorite memory?

"I uhh… I gotta go. P-potions essay for Snape I still gotta do—"

Axel cut in, "I finished mine already, I could help you if you want."

"N-no thanks," said Roxas quickly, "It's not a big deal, I just gotta get it done."

He turned and ran back through the passage as quickly as he could. In truth, he'd finished his essay on the Draught of Living Death three days ago, he just needed any excuse he could to get away from Axel. He ran blindly through the passage, tripping over the steps, scraping his palms and his knees.  _Don't care. Need to run._

Roxas ran out into the open without bothering to press the knot that froze the whomping willow. A thick branch walloped him in the stomach, sending him flying a good fifteen feet. The blow hurt, as did the landing, but he got up and left anyway. He was being ridiculous and he knew it. But there was shit he had to figure out, by himself.He needed a place to think, without distractions, to see whether this meantanything or not.

He caught sight Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood being forced into a corner by a pair of brawny Slytherins with Inquisitorial Squad badges. On any other occasion Roxas would have stopped immediately to come to their aid, especially now since they were fellow D.A. members. But not today. Their mere presence told him that the room of requirement was empty, so he turned the corner and out of sight before any of the four could catch sight of him.

 _I need a quiet place, I need a quiet place, I need a quiet place_ _,_  he thought quickly, pacing back and forth in front of the room of requirement. The door seemed to take forever to materialize. Roxas wrenched it open as soon as it had a handle and made his way towards a small writing desk, with a little window looking out to the mountains. On the desk he found a self-inking quill and some parchment. He sat down and took the quill, writing  _Reasons_ _I could be gay for Axel._  He furiously scribbled out what he wrote and instead put: _Reasons Axel might like me_ on the top left hand corner and  _Reasons I'm just being a moron_ on the top right. The lists proceeded as follows.

Reasons Axel might like me:

1\. Patronus thing

2\. Yule ball

3\. Second task

4\. Jealous/Olette thing.

Ah, yes, the Olette thing. Olette was a pretty Ravenclaw in their year. She was nice, but exceeding quiet. Needless to say, she and Roxas did not date for very long. But they did date, and Axel _hated her,_ for seemingly no reason. When Roxas asked him, he'd say she nagged too much about school work, or she was a smart-ass, or just that she didn't trust him.

In truth, Olette was rather fond of him, but this rivalry didn't last very long; her parents came to take her from school as soon as  _The Quibbler_ featured Harry Potter's interview on He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. But Roxas had had a  _slight_ feeling at the time that Axel was a tad jealous of her. Not wanting to seem narcissistic, he shrugged it off, but it was something to go on the list anyway.

_Reasons I'm just being a moron:_

1\. Dudes. Duh.

2\. Frienemies.

3\. Gryffindor/Slytherin. NO.

He sighed as he put the quill down. None of them were good reasons and he knew it. He'd thought Axel was a closet case ever since year one, really. Come on, he spiked his hair, his  _long_ hair; both of his ears were stretched, and he'd never even expressed a  _liking_ for any female. Being enemies barely even applied to them anymore; in fact they were as inseparable as the school allowed.

But still…

"Thought I'd find you here. Is this where they have the D.A. meetings as well?"

All of Roxas except his arm, which was occupied with flipping the parchment face down, froze to the spot. Had Axel followed him here? Or just guessed his location? Stupid, stupid Axel, why couldn't he just leave Roxas alone for five fucking minutes?

"No," Roxas lied stiffly.

Axel reached one long arm over his shoulder and swiped the paper from underneath his fingers.

"This doesn't look like Potions homework," he remarked, holding it high above his head, well out of Roxas' reach. Cursing his shortness, Roxas leapt for it anyway.

"Please don't," he growled through gritted teeth.

Axel smirked at him. "You know, I think I will."

Roxas did the first thing that came to mind, being in this room and all. He whipped his wand from his back pocket and shouted, " _Expelliarmus!"_ sending a red jet stream at Axel, effectively knocking the list out of his hands. Then he snapped, " _Incendio!"_ reducing the list to ash.

The redhead held his hands up in surrender. "I still saw it, you know," he said silkily, pretending to check out his nails.

"I hate you," said Roxas, feeling a little more than slightly sincere about it. But there was such a fine, blurred line between hate and—well, that other thing, that he just wasn't sure what side he was on.

"No you don't," Axel replied.

Roxas stuffed his wand back into his pocket and shoved Axel in the chest. "Yes, I do! You're soannoying! You're just this great big, spikey, annoying fucking  _thing! Don't laugh at me!"_

"You're used to it," Axel countered, still laughing a little. "I'm not that big, you'rejust tiny. And, not counting the Yule Ball, have you ever seen me  _not_ spikey? It's just weird, man. So you're gonna tell me that after fighting for hell knows how many years and hanging out nonstop for all of  _this_ year, you're gonna try and tell me that you've just nowrealized that I'm annoying? And you decided to hate me for it? Sorry kiddo, but I'm calling you're bluff. You don't hate me."

Roxas' head was spinning. Axel saw the paper and wasn't acting all freaked out. That could only mean one thing…

Axel took a step closer, and he took a step back. He collided with the desk, knowing that Axel had effectively cornered him. So, instead of shrinking down, he stood on his tiptoes, trying to make himself look at least a tiny bit more intimidating.

"I  _do_ hate you," he spat. They were almost nose to nose now, but Axel wasn't backing down. His scent was intoxicating, in fact it made Roxas feel slightly faint.  _No,_ he told himself, _N_ _o_ _whatareyoudoing? Boys_ ** _arenot_** _supposedtolikeotherboys! Hello! This is_ ** _Axel_** _we're talking about!_

But apparently none of that mattered. It didn't matter that Axel was about a foot taller than him and a Slytherin and his best friend slash worst enemy.

Axel half-chuckled. "No, you don't," he said assuredly.

He tilted his head slightly to the side. A question. Roxas shut his eyes and nodded once. An answer. Axel didn't need any more of a confirmation than that. He took Roxas' face in his hands and kissed him; slowly, gently, deeply. Roxas kissed him back.

And that was how Axel Flynn started dating Roxas Strife.


	6. YEAR SIX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some filler fluff because when my hard drive died last year, I was mostly working on chapter 7 anyway and I've quite forgotten what this chapter was originally supposed to be about.

Roxas was dreaming.

He knew he must have been, for two reasons. The first, because the muggle zoo he was currently strolling through had burned down years ago. The second, because it had _definitely_ been a _muggle_ zoo, and yet the creatures moseying around in their pens were not.

Kelpies swam playfully around in their swamp-like tanks, stopping every so often to sneer at random passerby’s. Thestrals dug their hooves into the ground and flapped their great wings (Roxas unfortunately could not see this). The gardens in the food court had lovely rhododendron bushes with live fairies that would sneak up and place insects on his shoulder if he got too close.

Most of the creatures in the zoo looked as though they’d hopped right out of his copy of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them._ And they _were_ fantastic. But there was one that stood out greatly.

Roxas paused when he reached the largest pen, protected by massive, thirty foot tall iron bars that converged on the top. Roxas had no doubt that the pen was enchanted by fire-safety magic as well, because inside lay an enormous dragon. She was beautiful, even in slumber. Her bright, amber scales shimmered in the sunlight like a river of molten gold as her chest steadily rose and fell. He was mesmerized, and watched her for a long while.

At some point or another, the cage must have magically extended itself to encompass Roxas without him noticing. That, at least, was what he’d determined with sleepy dream logic. Regardless of how it had come to be, Roxas had suddenly found himself trapped in a cage with a sleeping dragon.

Only she wasn’t sleeping any more. His movement, or perhaps his scent, had disturbed her. She exhaled softly, opening one glittery emerald eye, as if lazily checking to see whether the disturbance was worth waking over. One look at Roxas and she was on all fours. A meal like him apparently was well worth the endeavor to her.

Roxas backed against the stone wall that had materialized behind him. He held his breath, hoping that her vision was based on movement. But that wasn’t the case. She continued to advance on him, coming close enough for him to smell her burning breath. To his surprise, it carried an almost pleasant scent akin to charcoal.

He shut his eyes tightly. Even though he was still vaguely aware that this was all a dream, Roxas didn’t imagine his brain would be kind enough to give chomping dragon teeth a nice sensation. He braced himself for the worst. The dragon reared up, towering above him with her wings stretched out in a terrifying threat display. She lowered her head, tasting him in the air with a passive flick of her forked tongue. Finally she darted downward with a powerful thrust to the neck, and she…

…began kissing his face?

Roxas startled awake, his heart thumping almost painfully in his chest. He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes, rapidly trying to make sense of what was going on around him. There were cool spots on his cheeks where the dream dragon had been kissing him, and there was also a foreign weight on his knees. _Somebody was in his bed._

“What kind of fuckery!?” he shouted, shoving the intruder off his knees with so much force that they tumbled onto the stone floor. “ _Lumos!”_

The tip of his wand lit up, which momentarily forced his eyes shut. After sleeping in complete darkness for x amount of hours, he’d forgotten to take the light into consideration. Blinking furiously, he forced himself to look past the light and check the side of the bed. A squinting Axel grinned cheekily up at him, his hand thrown between the beam of light and his eyes.

“ _Axel!”_ Roxas whispered angrily. “You scared me half to death! How’d you get in here!?”

The redhead’s grin only widened. “I climbed through the window.”

“Axel.”

“What? I was sitting by myself in the common room, and I thought, hey, what kind of a boyfriend would I be if I didn’t climb through the window of the tallest tower—“

Roxas blinked deliberately, a deadpan expression on his face. “The walls of this Tower have more enchantments on them than Eloise Midgen’s acne cream. Tell me the truth.”

“Fine,” said Axel, looking as though he were having the time of his life. “Disillusionment Charm,” he said proudly. “And let me tell you what, I might’ve gotten in here before you’d even went to bed, only I had to wait around for some wandering first year to let me. I sat there for at _least_ a half an hour. Gave the Fat Lady a right start when I sneezed. Tell me, what the hell sort of password is _Mimbulous Mimbletonia?”_

“Search me,” said Roxas tiredly. “What sort of passwords do you Slytherins tend to keep?”

“Wizard Terminology,” Axel stated simply. “Last week it was _Monkswood._ Usually it alternates between _Pureblood_ and a variety of curses. Saved me on a Defense Against the Dark Arts exam once. I don’t think _anyone_ in Slytherin got that one wrong…”

“So you just marched right in up the stairs?” Roxas asked skeptically.

Axel’s grin faded just a tiny bit. “Well no,” he said. He pulled off one of his trainers, which was covered in black goo that looked a bit like car grease. “I guess Gryffindor and Slytherin weren’t really as buddy-buddy as everyone thought, cause when I tried to use the stairs, they turned into a slide coated in this shit. I had to levitate myself and steer my way to the top of the stairs. Nearly knocked down that painting of those old warlocks playing cards, too. Honestly I’m just glad I ended up in the right room. It said sixth years above the door, but sometimes they don’t always change them.”

Roxas let his wand go out, because he didn’t want Axel to see the way he was smiling like a dork. Of Axel’s many fine qualities, talking like a normal human being was not one of them. He had a tendency to go _on and on_ about the least important shit on the planet. Roxas loved to complain about it, but secretly he found it to be very cute.

“So, what?” said Roxas, walking his fingers up Axel’s arm. “You thought you’d just come right in, disturb me in my beauty sleep, and… have your way with me?” he breathed the last bit hotly in Axel’s ear.

“Well… yeah,” Axel admitted sheepishly. “You’d just been complaining this afternoon that everyone in your dormitory had gone home for Christmas, and I just sort of thought, why not, you know?”

Sex with Axel had certainly been the most… _trying_ milestone they’d had to overcome n their relationship. Intimacy came in baby steps. They started off holding hands, which was nothing, in Roxas’ muggle community where they could be who they liked. But in school, where a lot of students were wary enough with just their _friendship,_ Axel and Roxas both agreed it was best to keep on the down-low.

Next came kissing, which Roxas didn’t have too many qualms with either. He had come to terms with the fact that he was attracted to Axel and Axel was attracted to him and that was all well and good.

But to Roxas, _sex_ was a different matter entirely. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to try or was totally repulsed with the idea, it was just that in his mind, sex was a bit like batteries. Boys were positives and girls were negatives, and you just _could not put two positives together._ It just wouldn’t _work._

Axel reassured him over and over again that there was no rush, that they had plenty of time to get comfortable with each other and that he wasn’t about to ditch Roxas anytime soon. After months and months of guilty cold showers and frustration, Roxas finally broke.

The first time… it really sucked. Axel last a pitiful seven minutes and Roxas had been too sore to really enjoy himself. But when the worked up the courage to try again they got it right, and by the end of the summer between fifth year and sixth, Roxas as very much like every other teenaged boy on the planet: addicted.

Hogwarts had driven their sex activities into the ground. Even Axel (who was marginally more voyeuristic than Roxas) didn’t dare try to initiate anything under the watchful eyes riddled through the school. But with the Christmas Holiday here and Roxas’ dormitory well and truly deserted, it really was a golden opportunity to sneak in a quick shag.

“We’ll have to be quiet about it,” Roxas decided.

~o~

“I don’t want to go home.”

“So come home with me.”

“You know what I mean.”

By an amazing stroke of coincidence, hard work and luck, Axel and Roxas had each scored perfect marks in History of Magic for the term, and so were exempt from taking the N.E.W.T. for the course. They had taken their free afternoon to mean ‘go outside and don’t cause trouble,’ so they did exactly that. It was a gorgeous, sunny day out, and the boys had the entire lawn to themselves. They currently were sprawled out under one of the more harmless trees not far from the shore of the Black Lake.

They were completely alone.

“It’s gonna be fine,” said Axel. They both knew his words carried little truth. You-know-who was back, and there was no wishful thinking or optimism left to hide behind. From this point on, Roxas’ lineage alone would put him in danger wherever he went.

Dumbledore’s gravestone, not far from their position, gleamed merrily in the sunlight. Roxas knew that Dumbledore would have wanted it to be seen as a symbol of strength and unity. But to him, it served only as a reminder that Hogwarts was not the safe place he had always seen it as. That the danger was really out there, and that even the most powerful of forces could be useless.

Axel’s grim expression perked back up into a forced smile. “Hey. I thought we agreed that we weren’t gonna talk about this stuff for now. It’s _perfect_ outside, we don’t have any exams left to worry about, and we’re all alone out here, not being bothered. That’s more than a cause for celebration in my book. We should be no less than dry fucking out here.”

Roxas elbowed him hard in the ribs, but he also cracked a smile, which was really Axel’s goal to begin with.

“What are we even doing?” Roxas wondered out loud. “Just…us,” Roxas lifted their intertwined hands up for emphasis, “Ever since I met you, I’ve been breaking rules left and right. I was a _good_ kid once, you know. Now I’m a misfit.”

“I bring that out in people,” Axel said cheerily. “Besides, without me, you’d probably be wearing some cushy head boy badge right about now, filling out summer internship applications for the Ministry.”

Roxas raised an eyebrow, “That’s not really what I meant, but what exactly would be _wrong_ with that?” he asked. Axel looked like he had a snide retaliation ready, but before he could say it, Roxas kept going, “What do _you_ want to do when we get out of school? You must have _some_ idea, since you had to pick the classes that you’d take the N.E.W.T.s for.”

“Me?” Axel asked in surprise. The question had clearly taken him off guard. “Well… promise you won’t laugh.”

“Cross my heart,” said Roxas dryly.

“I..well,” said Axel carefully. “I guess I want to…” he blinked a few times, and then changed his mind last minute. “I want to work for Filibusters. You know, enchanted fireworks? Or you know, I bet I could probably get in with Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. They’re doing pretty well for the time, and the red hair would probably help,” he babbled awkwardly.

Roxas shook his head. “I’m not Demyx, I can tell when you’re lying.”

Axel cringed. “I want… to go to St. Mungos and train to be a healer.”

Despite having promised not to laugh, Roxas cracked. He couldn’t help it. “I’m—so sorry,” he sputtered. “I’m not laughing at _you._ I was expecting like, exotic pole dancing or raising flobberworms or something weird like that, and you wanna be a _doctor!?_ Axe, I don’t know about here, but where I come from, that’s one of the best things you could want for yourself. Do you see why I find it funny that you were reluctant to tell me?”

“I guess,” said Axel, frowning.

Roxas touched his arm. It was his way of apologizing without having to say anything. “Hey,” he murmured gently. “I’m not kidding. You want to spend the rest of your life _helping_ other people for a living. I think that’s fantastic. Sexy, even. And just so you know, I’d support you no matter what you wanted to do. Even if it _was_ exotic dancing.”

Axel smiled even though Roxas could tell that he was trying not to. “I think maybe I might… on the side.” He winked. “Maybe at home… when it’s just you and me. And the cat, I suppose. You know we’re going to have a cat.”

“You’re a dork,” Roxas said. But honestly, he wanted all the same things Axel did. He wanted them to have a house of their own and a cat, and he wanted to surprise Axel with dinner on the nights he got home late from the hospital. He wanted Axel to long forget that this conversation even happened and then, years later, to come home and find a collapsible pole installed in the living room. And he would crack up, and smile that doofy smile because Roxas remembered. And they would probably never even use the pole, but it wouldn’t matter.

To tell the truth, Roxas hadn’t thought much of how he wanted his life to be when he left school, except that he’d wanted it to be with Axel. He’d sort of just… come with the whole wizarding world package as far as Roxas was concerned. To go back to a life without Axel would be like snapping his wand and going back to living a life without magic. And no foreseeable circumstance would ever make Roxas want to do that.

“A little black cat, I think,” Axel mused thoughtfully. “You know black cats hardly ever get adopted, even in the wizarding world. Which I think is kinda stupid, since the superstition was _started_ by people who feared magic.”

“Can we name it Spock?” Roxas asked with a smile. “I’ve always wanted a black cat named Spock.”

Axel’s eyebrows furrowed a bit in confusion. “What’s a spock?”

Roxas laughed, really laughed, for the first time in a while. “Remind me to get us internet and cable. If you were muggleborn, you’d be such a trekkie. I can tell.”

“I have no idea what you just said to me,” said Axel, shaking his head. “You know, for all the blood purity and superior genetics purebloods claim to have, we don’t really know a whole lot about the world outside our own, do we?”

Roxas sighed, lying his head on Axel’s chest. “You have no idea. All my mom talks about when she sends letters is how impractical it is to be always cleaning up owl poop when you could achieve the same thing in about ten seconds with a phone call.”

“My parents are gonna have a blast with all your muggle junk when we have them over for Christmas dinners.”

“Yeah…”

Roxas let out another contented sigh. Even though there was a good chance that they wouldn’t even _have_ a future, it was nice to dream like they would.

“Axe?”

“Mm?”

“Kiss me?”

“Out here?”

“Yeah.”

Kissing on campus had been against Roxas’ code of conduct since Easter, when Professor McGonagall had caught them in a pretty compromising scenario outside Gryffindor Tower.* But sometimes, on days like this, exceptions had to be made.

So Axel kissed him. And then he did it again. And again.

As they laid together, the tranquil afternoon sunlight danced through the animated brambles of their willow tree. The shining waters of the Black Lake rolled with the breeze to the shore in tiny waves. Chatters and chirps from magical birds and insects echoed through the grounds from the Great Forest.

For Axel and Roxas, it would be quite some time before they found a day as happy as this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **For anyone who was curious, McGonagall had given them both detention and made them write ‘I will not snog my boyfriend like a promiscuous putz” about 200 times.


	7. YEAR SEVEN PT. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because Year Seven is several times longer than any other chapter, I figured splitting it into two chapters was fitting enough. Eight movies, eight chapters. It has a nice balance.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: I don't know what might trigger some of you guys, but there's some physical trauma and the likes in this chapter. If you've read the books, you know what the Carrows have done. Use your imagination.

_“Roxas! What the **hell** are you doing here!?_ You should be in hiding! It’s not safe for—“

“Shut up, Axel.”

The beginning of seventh year had finally dawned, and Axel was not pleased at what he found waiting for him on the Hogwarts Express. Well, he _was_ pleased, a little bit, because it was Roxas, and Roxas did that to him whatever the situation. But the amount of danger that Roxas was putting himself in by returning to Hogwarts was enough to make Axel livid.

After having spotting Roxas and Sora in their compartment, Axel looked cautiously around to make sure that nobody had heard them. After deciding that the coast was clear, or as clear as it was going to get, he entered the compartment and shut the door behind him.

“What are you playing at?” he demanded. Roxas was unresponsive. He would not even look Axel in the eye. “If anybody finds out you’re muggleborn—“

“They _won’t,_ as long as you keep your fat mouth shut,” Sora interjected, his voice having lost most of its natural warmth and patience. “You’re looking at the son of the head of the Department for International Magical Cooperation. My father’s been using what’s left of his influence over the Ministry to assimilate Roxas into my family.”

Axel stared for a minute. He was relieved that steps to conceal Roxas’ identity had been taken, but there were still some serious risks. “But _anyone_ above the sixth year could rat you out! It’s not exactly a secret that you were petrified in the second year—“

“At exactly the same time and place as two other muggleborns,” Sora corrected. “Simply caught in the crossfire.”

Sora was clearly frustrated, so Axel didn’t speak for a while. There were still plenty of flaws in the plan, but he supposed the only reason he saw them was because he was looking. Now that they were on the train, there wasn’t really anything he could do about it anyway. There was a long stretch of silence, during which Roxas picked at his nails and Axel looked at his feet. Finally, the lines on Sora’s forehead smoothed over.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’re the only person here that cares for Roxas,” he said quietly, giving Axel a meaningful look.

Then the moment ended, and Sora grinned and him and flashed them a wink. Axel felt himself getting very red.

“Did you _tell_ him?” Axel asked Roxas incredulously.

“ _No,_ ” Roxas insisted fiercely. “ _He_ figured it out on his own, and then he _tickled_ me until I told him the truth. I’ll have you both know that I spend _hours_ lying awake at night wondering what kind of destruction could befall the world if you two ever became friends.”

Sora chortled. “You make it sound like you guys are the illuminati or something. It’s really so _obvious._ Anyhow, I think it’s just smashing,” he teased.

Axel considered threatening Sora, but decided to drop it. His days were numbered now.

“Well then, that’s that,” Axel said with resign. He took Roxas’ hand in his own, and the blonde finally looked him in the eye. “It’s good to see you, Rox.”

~o~

Things at Hogwarts only got worse from there, worse even than the first time the Dark Lord rose to power. Writing lines for Professor Umbridge would be considered a real treat in comparison to the sort of punishments the Carrows liked to dish out. The House Point system was hardly even used anymore. Minor misdemeanors that used to lose points now earned beatings. Major rule breaking earned the Cruciatus Curse. A hierarchy had been created between all the students. The best off students were seventh year, pureblood Slytherins, and the worst off were first year, half-blood (or less) students of any other house. Any aversion to this resulted in a torturing. Every so often, a student disappeared.

Even with the status of pureblood, seventh year Slytherin, Axel hardly fared better than the other students. He had stomached his way through using the Cruciatus Curse on Dumbledore’s bird, but the moment he refused to practice on a first year that had earned detention, he’d been sentenced to a night in the dungeon with his wrists bound so tightly he fainted.

The only person aside from the Carrows and Snape who seemed to have no problem with this was Filch. For the first time in student memory, the caretaker whistled merrily as he hobbled through the corridors. Rumor had it he had finally been given the okay to use the chains he’d been keeping oiled up in his office for all those years.

There came a time, beginning around Christmastime, during which students began disappearing. Axel had assumed that this was due to muggleborns being discovered, or beaten students becoming too injured to continue their studies. But then, just as the last month of term was approaching, occasionally there would be another kind of disappearance. Most of the time, when students went missing, the Carrows acted like everything was ordinary, and refused to answer any questions about it. But in _these_ situations, students would be brought in for questioning, security would double, and punishment would reach an all time high. To Axel, this suggested that some students were not only gone, but unaccounted for entirely.

Times spent with Roxas were getting increasingly harder to come by. Tensions between the houses were higher than ever, particularly between Gryffindor and Slytherin. But when Axel did encounter those rare, sought-after moments, Roxas would often hint that Dumbledore’s Army was still happening, and that despite the danger, he would remain behind to help in whatever ways he could.

Axel knew the day was coming when Roxas would have to disappear too. They’d both been preparing for it for some time, and yet somehow when it happened, Axel found he was really not quite ready for it.

It happened in late May, during quite an ordinary night. Axel had been hanging around the common room with Demyx, as per usual.

“What’s been going on with you lately?” Demyx prompted. “You’ve been acting like a zombie.”

Axel snapped up from the book he’d been pretending to study from, Demyx’s sudden question zapping him back to reality. “’M not acting like a zombie,” he lied. “I’m studying for exams. You know, the ones _you_ should be studying for, instead of playing that stupid instrument all night and driving everyone round the bend.”

“You’ve been looking at the same spot for the last twenty minutes,” Demyx pointed out. “You’re not studying any more than I am. The only difference is that you’re pretending and I’m not.”

For this, Axel had no answer. The truth was, he was worried sick. Not even necessarily about Roxas, although the blonde did take up the majority of Axel’s concentration. But he worried about the rest of the wizarding world too. About his family, and about the eleven year old first years that had come to Hogwarts expecting quirky teachers like their parents and had instead received Death Eaters. Even if all this came to an end, if by some miracle, who-know-you was vanquished, would those first years ever recover? How does one just _get over_ being tortured at eleven years old?

But these were things that he couldn’t really talk about in front of people in his own house, but it turned out he didn’t have to. Professor Slughorn entered the room at just that moment. He made a direct line to the armchair that Axel was seated in. Axel noted that his usually red face was exceptionally pale.

“I’m so sorry, m’boy,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically grave. “But you’ve been summoned.”

Axel knew right away that it was to do with Roxas. He hadn’t shown up for Potions _or_ Muggle Studies that day, and now this? Roxas had gone, and the Carrows were looking for him. There was no escaping this for Axel, but if he was going to have to face them, he would do everything he could to keep them away from Roxas, and from all the others for that matter.

Slughorn kept a fistful of Axel’s robes in his grip the entire way down to the second level dungeon, as though he were expecting Axel to try and escape. They were headed into the deepest part of the castle, where only Professor Snape was comfortable teaching students. Although the walk didn’t really take them too far from the Slytherin common room, it seemed to Axel like hours. They finally came to a stop in front of a heavy looking door, to a classroom Axel had never been in before.

“This is where I have to leave you,” said Slughorn. “Remember, don’t talk back, tell them _everything_ they want to know and do anything they say. Don’t try to be noble.”

With one last half pat, half shove on the shoulder, Axel was pushed into the chamber, and the door was shut behind him.

To say that it may have been used a classroom at some point would have been extremely generous. It looked more suitable for storage than anything else. Actually, with its thick black chains nailed crudely into the wall, it looked more suitable for chaining up people and beating them, but Axel was trying not to think that way for the moment. He told himself that he’d been brought all the way down here because they were trying to keep Roxas’ disappearance hushed and didn’t want to be overheard. Axel also knew that he was telling himself bullshit.

Both Alecto and Amycus were waiting for him, wands drawn and false manners forgotten.

“I’ll make this simple for you,” Alecto sneered, directing her wand at Axel. “Tell us where the mudbloods and blood traitors are hiding. Or we’ll force you.”

Axel fought very hard to keep his expression blank and confused. It wasn’t fear or nerve he was expecting to leak out, it was pure, unadulterated anger that he struggle to keep at bay.

“Who?” he questioned with an air of idiocy commonly found among Draco Malfoy’s cronies.

Alecto nodded towards her brother. He cracked his knuckles, then sent his fist flying into the side of Axel’s head faster than he ever could have anticipated. He crumpled to his hands and knees, his vision swimming and his head throbbing.

“Don’t play stupid with me,” Alecto snarled from above, “ _Where is Dumbledore’s Army!?”_

“I don’t know,” Axel replied through gritted teeth, raising himself up to one knee.

The Carrows exchanged looks. “All right, fine,” said Alecto. She whipped her wand furiously, and from it fine, razor-sharp wires shot out and coiled themselves around Axel’s wrists, cutting into them and bonding them together behind his back.

“Hold him,” she said.

Amycus shuffled behind Axel and, gripping his arms in a light lock, forced him back into a standing position. It was very uncomfortable; Axel had to hold himself in a very unnatural position to conform to the way Amycus held him and keep his bonds from cutting further into his arms at the same time.

“Let’s try this again,” she said. “Now, as you know, for the last several weeks, students have been going missing. They haven’t set off any alarms, and all of the passages in and out of the school are guarded by our people. _That_ means,” she explained, as though talking to a two year old, “That they must be _here!_ So where are they, hm? The Chamber of Secrets?”

She laughed at her own joke, but, were the situation different, Axel probably would have been impressed with the idea and suggest someone learn something in parseltongue so that they could hide out down there. It would have to wait, though, for a time during which Axel didn’t have a wand threateningly poised at his throat.

“Dammit, lady, I don’t _know,”_ Axel repeated.

“ _Crucio,_ ” Alecto spat.

Axel’s bonds suddenly felt like gentle caresses, their pain dimmed to nothing in comparison to the immeasurable pain spreading through his body. Nerves he didn’t even know he _had_ were ablaze, scorching him from the inside out. A million paper cuts underneath his fingernails, ten thousand trodden on legos didn’t even hold a _candle._

Still, Axel kept his jaw clenched tight, refusing to give them the satisfaction of a scream. He limited his voice to muffled grunts and angry growls.

After what seemed an eternity, the pain eased, and Axel slumped over, supported only by the iron grip Amycus had on his arms.

“Like that?” Alecto sneered. “Need some more? Because _trust me,_ that was _nothing._ I’m just getting started. This is your last warning, brat, before I really start to get nasty. Where is Roxas Strife?”

Roxas’ name had not been brought up directly until now. If Axel’d had reservations about leaking information before, his resolve was dead set now. This _was_ about Roxas, and from him they wouldn’t get a single peep.

“Why would they tell me? I’m a Slytherin!” Axel seethed. It was true that nobody had ever actually _told_ him where Dumbledore’s Army held their meetings or where they were hiding out, but Roxas had pretty much confirmed it for him the day they started dating. Besides, it was like Alecto said; with all the secret passages out of the school sealed, there really wasn’t anywhere they would go besides the room of requirement. Axel chose not to disclose this.

Before he had the chance to wince, Alecto hit him with the curse again. She was right, it _was_ worse than the first one, but Axel was still able to keep himself from screaming out. If they were going to torture him into insanity, Axel wasn’t going to make it easy for them. 

“Your insolence isn’t doing you any favors, you little brat!” Alecto cried.

A sudden thought must have stricken her, because the lines on her grotesque face suddenly smoothed over, and her voice resumed the tone that could be used on a five year old. Axel supposed it was her one woman show of good auror, bad auror.

“You’re going to take me to him,” she cooed. “And you can decide whether you want to stand with us, in your rightful place, or oppose us. I’m sure an… arrangement can be made. After all, with the muggle world enslaved, we’re going to need servants. You can keep him as a _pet._ ”

Her sneer grew even wider. “Here’s option two. We can keep up this little struggle, and when you finally break, I’ll kill you both together. That’s not so bad is it?” her tone grew fierce again as she warned, “You don’t want me to get to option three.”

Axel, though breathing very heavily, held his nose in the air, adamant.

This gesture seemed to have offset Alecto’s last nerve, because she snatched a fistful of hair at the crown of his head and yanked it so that he was forced to look at her. She had a crazed gleam in her eyes as she chanted, “Option three. When I find them, and _I will_ find them, a very special treatment awaits Roxas. First, the Cruciatus curse. And then, when every last, precious scream has been extracted from him, when his throat is so raw it’s cracked, choking him on his own filthy muggle blood, _then_ I’ll kill him. But not with magic, oh no. I’m going to cut, slowly, inch by inch, until every last putrid drop of blood is… eradicated. Is that what you want? Want to watch me torture you little friend to death? Then _tell me where to find Dumbledore’s Army!”_ she roared.

“You can all go to **_hell!_ ”** Axel rasped, with as much ferocity as he could muster. Like _hell_ was she going to touch a _hair_ on Roxas. “You and every scumbag that ever decided to follow Voldemort!” he spoke the name deliberately, and spat in her face.

Alecto positively quivered with rage. “You…dare?” she whispered, white as a sheet, “You would _DARE!?”_

An unseen blow between his shoulder blades had Axel crumpled to the floor in an ungraceful heap. A solid fist rammed into his stomach repeatedly, bringing blood to his lips.

“Think you’re brave? Think you’re so righteous? _Crucio!_ ”

If the last few curses had been bad, this was nothing short of unspeakable. The first of them had been boring, routine. Something that was done because it was necessary. This one had _rage._ It felt as though each muscle was tearing itself from the bone, as though every inch of his skin, every organ, was being pierced with a thousand needles at once. Axel had an unusually high threshold for pain, but even he could keep himself from screaming out in agony. He simply didn’t have the control. Instinct took over and he thrashed on the floor, deepening the cuts on his wrists and forearms. The only thought that kept him living, kept him from begging for mercy, kept him conscious: _At least it’s me and not Roxas._

And then it was over, more abruptly than it should have been. Something was going on nearby, something _loud._ Like, banging pots and pans together? Or maybe rattling suits of armor? Axel couldn’t focus well enough to piece together what was happening.

“Peeves,” Alecto and Amycus chorused together.

“We should go stop him, before he attracts someone less spineless than Slughorn,” Amycus advised. Alecto pushed past him and rushed out the door, her wand drawn.

Amycus nudged Axel’s head with his foot, hissing, “Stay put if you know what’s good for you.”

The trouble was, Axel could hardly even keep himself conscious, let alone escape.

Just as he felt himself slipping away, he was jolted back to his senses by the sudden sensation of being plunged into icy water—the familiar but eerie feeling one experiences after accidentally walking through a ghost. Or, in this case, after a ghost walks through you.

“Oh, thank goodness I’ve found you,” said the voice of Sir Nicolas de Mimsy-Porpington, the Gryffindor ghost. “Please, I know you’re weak but there isn’t much time. We’re all here, but we can only keep them distracted for a moment.”

“’S the point?” Axel croaked. “Th’ll jus come get me ‘gain.”

“Professor McGonagall has been notified,” said Sir Nick, “she’s on her way down as we speak. But you must get away before they can do any more damage. Get to your dormitory, the hospital wing, anywhere _safe,_ just till morning. You have my word, you will not be taken down here again.”

Axel didn’t quite believe the ghost, but nevertheless he managed to hobble to his feet, even without the use of his hands.

“Ah, there’s nothing I can do about those,” said Nick, glancing sadly down at his transparent self. “But thankfully they’ve left the doors open for you. You have behaved valiantly tonight, dear boy. I do believe the Sorting Hat may have been wrong to place you in Slytherin.”

With a weak nod of gratitude, Axel excited the room. The moment he did so, some 200 ghosts all flooded the corridor at once, shrieking like hell. They succeeded in both confusing the Carrows and blocking their view of him. Peeves’ clanging stopped, but the noise from the other ghosts more than made up for the ruckus.

Axel didn’t get very far before he realized a serious problem: there was nowhere in the castle that he could get to, not even the Slytherin dormitories, without climbing stairs. He could barely even move over even ground.

“ _Pssst!”_

The redhead turned his head warily toward the whisper to see Peeves bouncing away from him, towards the opposite wall.

“This way, slippery slythie,” he murmured gleefully, disappearing into the wall. “ _Tis a secret even to the secret keepers,”_ his voice echoed.

 _How useless,_ Axel thought, leaning into the wall. But it wasn’t a wall at all. He sunk right through with a gasp of surprise, barely managing to keep his footing. Peeves had shown him a secret passageway!

Axel didn’t know where it would let out, but between Filch and the Carrows, he’d take Filch any day. He crept warily through the pitch black tunnel, pausing periodically when moving became too exhausting. He was vaguely aware of the blood trickling from the cuts on his arms, but the pain was manageable. He only hoped that he’d find a way to get them free before he bled out.

By the time his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he was approaching what seemed a dead end. Determined not to make the same mistake twice, Axel pressed on and the wall dissolved in front of him. Axel looked around, realizing with a start that despite the lack of incline, the corridor had carried him up nine levels and deposited right in the seventh floor corridor. How the passage could have ascending so much without sloping upwards was beyond Axel, but he didn’t question it. The Room of Requirement was right around the corner.

 _I need a place to hide from the Carrows,_ Axel thought desperately, begging the room to grant him access even though it was probably Slytherin-proofed by its occupants.

To his relief, the door materialized just as it normally would. With great difficulty, Axel turned around and awkwardly took hold of a handle with both hands behind his back. The door wasn’t heavy, but it still required some tricky maneuvering to get himself inside without digging deeper into his cuts.

When the door shut behind him, Axel all but collapsed onto the ground. He noticed that he’d landed on some rags, so he pressed his arms into them, resigned to stay in his little spot and not alert anybody to his presence until it became light out. But then—

_“Petrificus Totalis!”_

A full body bind his Axel before he could so much as shut his eyes. Somebody had been waiting for him.

The spell did as it was meant to. Axel was rigid as a board, unable to do anything but breathe and move his eyes. Thanks to the abundant moonlight streaming into the room, he could see Neville Longbottom, accompanied by several other students, advancing on him with their wands drawn.

When Axel had first met Neville on the Hogwarts Express all those years ago, he never imagined that they’d arrive to this scenario. That anxious, roly poly boy from first year had grown into a fearless leader, and Axel knew he deserved any fate Neville would sentence him to.

Many of the other students were rousing now; Axel could hear terrified murmurs coming from all directions.

_“It’s a Slytherin!”_

_“How’d he get in?”_

_“Have they found us?”_

“Get the veritaserum, quickly,” Neville murmured to Lavender Brown, who happened to be standing nearest. She nodded fiercely and disappeared momentarily from sight.

By this time, Roxas had tumbled out of his hammock and was lazily making his way over to see what all the fuss is about. When his eyes met Axel’s, they widened to the size of dinner plates and he jumped into action immediately.

“What the hell are you doing!?” he shouted loudly, causing several people to jump. He started pushing his way through the crowds.

“That’s what we’re going to find—“ Neville started.

“Not him, _you!”_ Roxas exclaimed, examining Axel with shaking hands. “Merlin’s fucking beard, look at his arms! He’s been _tortured_ for crying out loud! Never mind that!” he snapped at Lavender, who had reappeared with the truth potion. “Get him some blankets!”

Something in Roxas’ tone must have overridden Neville’s authority, because Lavender immediately set down the potion and did as she was told.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Roxas repeated, trying to work away the wires. “Oh, it’s no use. _Reducto.”_

Axel’s arms were free at last, in less pain now but unfortunately just as immovable as ever. Neville’s jinx hadn’t been lifted yet, so his mobility was limited to what Roxas was doing for him.

“Would you let him up?” Roxas growled irritably.

Neville shuffled uncomfortably. “But he’s a Slytherin,” he said hesitantly.

“ ** _So what!?_ ” **Roxas bellowed hotly. “ _Look_ at him! He looks like hell! You really think he’s here to rat us out? Look at yourselves, all of you. Here we are, fighting a war for equality, and yet you can’t even get your heads out of your damn asses long enough to get over your prejudices within our _own kind._ Are you really going to treat him like he’s less of a person because of a decision an old hate made _seven years ago?_ Because it that’s so, then you’re no better than any of the Death Eaters.”

 _Damn,_ Axel thought. If he could have, he would have pounced on Roxas and hugged him with all his might. _Wow, I love him. I love him so damn much._ He knew it was an impractical time to be fawning over Roxas’ bravery and goodness, but he couldn’t really help it.

Roxas’ speech hit Neville even harder than it was meant to. Blind prejudice towards Slytherin was clearly something he’d never even considered before.

“Of course, you’re right,” he said, looking very embarrassed. He approached Axel and Roxas, picking up the veritaserum that lay forgotten at Axel’s feet.

He uncapped it and let a few drops fall onto Axel’s tongue Roxas was clearly not pleased about it, but he didn’t try to stop Neville either. Axel didn’t really mind. If he were able to move, he would tell them that it wasn’t really necessary, but if it gave Neville and the others peace of mind, Axel would happily take it just to finally be cleared of suspicion once and for all.

“This will make you tell us the truth,” said Neville, “I’m going to let you up now, and you’re going to answer our questions. Don’t try anything.”

As soon as Neville muttered the countercurse Axel sat up and heaved a few silent sobs, the kind one only experience under intense pain, frustration, and exhaustion.

“Look,” he croaked. “I didn’t come here to make trouble, I just needed a place to crash where the Carrows couldn’t find me. I’ve seriously had the shittiest night ever and I just want to sleep. I’ll be out of your hair in the morning.”

“What happened?” Neville asked.

Lavender draped a large duvet around Axel’s shoulders and Roxas tended to Axel’s wounds. He wasn’t as skilled at healing as Axel, but it would make do.

Axel told Neville exactly what had taken place in the dungeon. Neville went particularly pale when Axel described the difference in intensities between the curses. He then told them about the ghosts, what Sir Nicolas had said, and the bewitched passageway Peeves showed him.

“But how did you get into the room?” Neville asked.

Axel shrugged. “Same way you always do? You know, ask?”

“No no,” said Neville impatiently. “We’ve got it set up so that nobody from Slytherin can get into it. We know it works, because Malfoy kept trying to break into here two years ago while we were inside and he never could. So how did you get past it?”

Axel considered it a moment. “Don’t know,” he admitted, giving Neville a hard look. “Maybe the room decided that my need was greater than your prejudice.”

Neville looked rightfully ashamed of himself at this point. “Right, We’ll let you rest now. I’m sorry for what happened to you… and for how poorly we received you. I don’t know if a hammock’s popped up—“

“He can use mine,” said Roxas. “Come on, Axe.”

The crowd of teens dispersed immediately, whispering and sniffling. Axel had kept his story raw, and spared no details; it had apparently been enough to reduce some kids to tears.

“Okay, this was definitely smaller before,” Roxas said as they approached his hammock. It had in fact doubled in size since Axel had arrived.

“Had to make room for two,” Axel said, smiling a little bit for the first time that night. Roxas had done a passable job at healing Axel’s wounds. They now looked like fresh, pink scars, and he could move freely without fear of ripping them open.

Even so, he had aches in places he’d never imagined possible, and he really was exhausted. With great exertion and a lot of help from Roxas, he lowered himself into the hammock and assumed a resting position. Even though their hammock was partially secluded by drapes, columns, and other hammocks, Roxas hesitated a moment.

But Axel held his arms out, so Roxas gave up and climbed in with him. He knew as well as Axel that people had been suspecting their involvement for the last three years anyway, so what did it matter, really? A brief moment of silence passed between them, then Roxas abruptly burst into tears, clinging to Axel for dear life and shaking with miserable sobs.

“What? What is it, what’s the matter?” Axel asked, alarmed. The low buzz of whispers from the other students continued, lowering perhaps by a little bit.

“It’s all my fault!” Roxas sobbed, burying his face into Axel’s shirt and wringing the fabric with his fingers. “They took you, and they t-tor—did this to you because they were looking for me. This is _all_ because of me! I’m—I’m so _sorry,_ Axel.”

Axel felt his heart break a little. He’d rather have the row of the century with Roxas than see him cry. After all, he’d spent _years_ fighting Roxas on countless occasions. But when Roxas cried, it was only because there was nothing else he _could_ do, and Axel was utterly powerless to stop it.

“Why? _I’m_ not sorry. I’d do it again and I really don’t know how I’d keep going in this stupid fucking place if it weren’t for you because I love you to pieces and I cannot _believe_ I just said that out loud!”

Axel swore, appalled at himself. “For crying out loud I was trying to find the right time and I bet _everyone_ heard that,” he said frustratedly. “You know they really didn’t have to bother with the veritaserum, I would have told the tr—“

Suddenly it didn’t matter because Roxas was kissing him, hard. The interaction was meaningful, but simple. They didn’t need to push it. Not here.

“I love you too, you big idiot,” Roxas said.

Axel fell asleep stroking Roxas’ hair. Roxas stayed awake for hours, contemplating and recontemplating how all of this could have gone different, and what was going to happen now that both of them were on the Carrows’ blacklist. But even so, sleeping next to Axel made him feel safer than he’d felt in several months.

~o~

When Roxas awoke the next morning, it was well past noon. Light streamed into the room of requirement so brightly it was a wonder he was able to sleep for as long as he had. The volume had reached a dull roar as most of the other students had already roused and were practicing spells on one another.

The next thing that Roxas noticed was that he was alone in his hammock. Where had Axel gone? Had he left without saying goodbye, so as not to wake Roxas? Or, even stranger, had all of last night just been some crazy dream conjured up from all of his worries?

Roxas frowned. He scanned the room for some sign of Axel’s vibrant red hair. He figured he’d go to Neville, or Parvati if Neville wasn’t around. She wasn’t exactly the most important figure in the D.A., but she knew everything about everybody.

But there was no need. As soon as Roxas stood up to begin his search, he spotted Axel and Neville shaking hands a short distance away. Axel looked very pale, and there was a large bruise blooming on his left cheek, but otherwise he looked unharmed.

“Hey!” Roxas called, approaching them.

“Roxas! You’re up!” Axel said, grinning. Despite all he’d been through, it seemed that Axel was already back to normal.

Curiously, Roxas looked between them. “What’s going on?” he asked. It didn’t seem like there was any sort of trouble, but where Axel was involved, one can never be too sure.

Axel puffed his chest out proudly. “You’re looking at the new official ambassador to Dumbledore’s Army.”

Roxas blinked. “Ambassador?”

“Well, yeah. See the thing is, even though the Carrows think I know where you guys are hiding out, they can’t _prove_ it. Neville says that you guys nicked all of Snape’s veritaserum when people started going into hiding, and that takes _months_ to make. You can order it premade, but it’s pretty expensive and I don’t think they’ll waste the galleons. So it’s not like that can force it out of me,” he said this with a nervous laugh. “So the only thing they really have on me is that I know you, and that I don’t support you-know-who. _But,_ as far as anyone _else_ is concerned, I’m just another slimy, good for nothing Slytherin. So who better for the job?”

“But what do you mean ambassador?” Roxas pressed.

Axel shrugged. “You know, I could give you guys info from an outsider’s perspective on what’s going on in the school, keep you updated, that sort of thing. I’m not sure how you’re all getting food, but I can try to nick you some from the kitchen when I get the chance. But I’m gonna have to get someone to put an extension charm on my bag for me, cause I haven’t gotten the hang of it just yet.”

“What? No way!” Roxas protested. “What if you get caught? It’s way too dangerous.”

“Says the guy who marched right into the dragon’s den covered in gold,” Axel argued. “What use am I sitting around studying for exams? What the hell it that going to do? If I just sit on the back burner and wait everything out, last night will have been for nothing. I _want_ to fight.”

It wasn’t Roxas that interrupted this time, but Neville. “Why?” he asked. “Why risk your neck?”

Axel rolled his eyes. “Why do _you_ risk _your_ neck? You’ve got exactly the same blood heritage as I do, but nobody questions you. Because it’s the _right_ thing to do! _I_ don’t want dominion over the muggles, _I_ don’t want you-know-who to take over. Just because I’m a self-serving asshole in a house full of self-serving assholes doesn’t mean I don’t want to protect the people I love! Don’t I have that right?” he cried in frustration.

Neville nodded. “Yes, you do,” he said. “I just wanted to know what you were going to say.”

He handed Axel one of Dumbledore’s Army’s enchanted galleons. “Take this. It was Luna’s. If something’s going on, it’ll get hot in your pocket and the serial number will form a message.”

“Wonder how much that’ll go for on eBay, after this is all over,” Roxas laughed.

“What’s eBay?” Axel and Neville chorused.

“Nothing. Muggle thing,” said Roxas quickly. “W-where are you headed from here, then?” he asked Axel.

Axel brightened considerably now that Roxas wasn’t fighting his position in the D.A.. “Round the Hospital Wing,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “You did a pretty good job patching me up, but I did cough up a bit of blood last night, so there might be some internal bleeding. Neville reckons I should be able to get there without being noticed if I use a disillusionment charm. Might give Madame Pomfrey a jump, but it’s better than running into somebody less than friendly. After all, it worked last time.” He winked.

Ignoring that last comment, Roxas for once agreed. “Fine. I’ll do it myself, since you don’t have a wand. Where’d you leave it, anyway? They didn’t take it, did they?”

“Nah, it’s in the Slytherin dormitory,” said Axel glumly. “And I really don’t fancy going back there to get it until after I’m out of the Hospital Wing.”

Roxas agreed with that, too. Until he was able to meet with Professor McGonagall and sort things out, it was best that Axel stayed away from there, where the Carrows were most likely to be lurking. Roxas understood that if Axel was going to continue attending classes as normal, he wouldn’t be able to avoid the Carrows forever. But better to at least get him into safe hands before their next encounter.

“Okay. Turn around,” said Roxas quietly.

“Mm, Roxy, you’re making me blush,” said Axel, though he did turn around as he was told. “You know how I love it when you take me from behi—“

_Rap!_

Roxas cracked his wand over the back of Axel’s skull a little harder than he needed to, but the spell was powerful enough to make Axel disappear almost completely from sight. Movement was the only thing that kept him visible.

“Nice,” Neville commented, if a bit red around the ears. “Please excuse me, and good luck.”

He left, leaving Axel and Roxas alone near the door. Roxas wanted to do something more, to insist on coming with him, or asking him to find a way to let them know he was all right. But Roxas couldn’t do any of those things. He wouldn’t know if Axel was okay until the next time they saw each other, and who knew when that would be?

“Be careful,” he said, looking meaningfully into where he thought Axel’s eyes were. “Don’t do anything crazy, and stay in the Hospital Wing for as long as Madame Pomfrey tells you to. Remember that time you left early after that time I put a dancing jinx on your legs, and you spent double History of Magic doing the Irish Jig? Let’s not have a repeat performance.”

“Yes mom,” Axel replied, his grin invisible but apparent in his voice. “I’ll lay low for a while.”

He leaned forward and kissed Roxas on the forehead. Nobody was around except Terry Boot, who was watching the door, and Axel was mostly invisible, but Roxas blushed furiously. It was the most intimate they’d ever been in public.

“Jerk…” Roxas muttered.

“I love you,” said Axel brightly. “See you soon.”

Roxas had barely murmured a reply, and Axel was gone. The only thing he could do now was wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe this is my house pride talking, but something that really grinded my gears throughout the books was how every single Slytherin was supposed to be evil. Some of the main themes of the story is prejudice and racism and yet if you’re in Slytherin, you’re probably a dark wizard and a bully. So I’m fixing it, because peace and balance needs to be restored to the universe.


	8. YEAR SEVEN PT. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We've reached the end! Thanks for reading xoxo

Axel seemed to visit often, but never as often as Roxas would have liked. Most of the time when he dropped by, he and Neville buried themselves in the corner, talking quietly with their heads together.

Occasionally he brought food, and what an occasion it was. With the help of a few willing participants, Axel was able to expand his school bag to just over twice its regular size. The magic wasn’t as good as it could have been, but it allowed Axel to cram in enough food from the kitchens for everybody to have a plateful. He’d come back the week after, just after dinner, with fresh, steaming hot food for everyone. Most of the D.A. warmed up to him after that.

All in all, Axel came around maybe a few times a week, or sometimes every other day if something particularly interesting happened. Once he appeared with a beaten first year over his shoulder, begging them to take him in and heal him.

Then it happened. Axel hadn’t shown up for a while, and they’d run out of food when the passage to the Hog’s Head opened up. Aberforth gave them what he could, but hope had nearly faded by the time the day came when Ariana came to them.

The painting that her tunnel lie behind was occupied by a sleepy, ill-mannered goblin, so when she came, it didn’t take long for people to notice her politely trying to excuse herself to the front.

“Aberforth has requested your presence,” she told Neville gently, after they’d finally hushed the angry goblin enough for her to speak. Her face was serious, but her tone seemed happy enough. It was impossible to tell whether the news was good or bad, or whether there really was any news at all.

“Maybe he’s ordered a case of butterbeer for us!” Seamus suggested hopefully.

“Or maybe he’s found a way to smuggle us out through the village!”

Barely a minute had passed since Neville disappeared, yet the room was buzzing with excited whispers.

Roxas took hardly any part in it. He didn’t see the point, since whatever Aberforth had to say probably wouldn’t really affect their situation. The end of term was very near; unless something drastic and unexpected happened in the near future, it was only a matter of time before they were either caught or starved. If Axel had been stopped (or worse) they’d have to start sending out their own eventually. Since escape from Hogwarts was near impossible even for one person, as a whole the D.A. didn’t really have a whole lot of options.

Roxas was, for the hundredth time that day, beginning to imagine all the terrifying things that may have happened to Axel, when something drastic and unexpected _did_ happen.

Neville re-emerged from the portrait hole, and he was not alone. He hopped down cheerfully and was followed by Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Harry Potter.

Applause erupted deafeningly from every student in the room, even Roxas.

For weeks, Neville had been telling them that it wasn’t over, that Harry was going to come help them take back the castle, that he hadn’t abandoned them; he was out fighting you-know-who. Scraps of news of Harry made it to their ears from time to time: rumors about the trio infiltrating the Ministry of Magic, about breaking into Gringotts and escaping on a dragon. They seemed more like legend than fact, and Roxas never would have believed it. But with the world in the state it was, nothing was truly too far-fetched anymore.

Roxas’ galleon seared in his pocket, as did nearly everyone else’s. Pulling it out, he saw that it only read one word:

POTTER

When the cheering died down, however, it soon became very clear that Harry didn’t really know what he was doing, or what was going on in the castle. And he _certainly_ wasn’t there to lead a battle. Many people flared up in anger, but Roxas wasn’t among them. He had been without hope for far too long to gain it all back at once like that. Even if Harry _had_ come for revolution, it wasn’t as though they were going to storm the castle in riots. No, Harry’s approach to things was usually more indirect.

But that hadn’t stopped people from answering the call. One after another, old members of Dumbledore’s Army were stepping through the portrait hole, and even a few students that had graduated years ago.

Harry’d had to repeat at least a dozen times that he was searching of something of Ravenclaw’s. Roxas, who knew very little about Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, kept silent but did listen keenly for any other student’s response that may have become lost in the sea of voices. It was Luna that finally offered to just bring Harry up to their common room so he could check things out himself.

Harry’s arguments against fighting, although insistent, didn’t seem to deter anybody from preparing. Naminé and Olette excitedly began practicing hexes in the far corner; Seamus Finnigan was changing all of his bandages, wrapping them tightly. There was more life within the room than there had been for weeks.

It was as though they hadn’t been waiting for Harry to charge in and lead them, really. It was that he’d become the symbol of hope, and siege. Everyone had been assuming that he wasn’t just in hiding, that he’d been actively fighting you-know-who. In the end, seeing it confirmed was all it took to give them the courage to act on their own.

Adult witches and wizards were now clambering through the passage, including a man and woman with such bright red hair that Roxas at first mistook them from Axel’s parents. When a clan of redhead teenagers followed, however, Roxas quickly realized his mistake, and promptly pointed them out to Ron, who was standing nearby. To Roxas surprise, the family was directly followed by one of the old Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers, Remus Lupin. If Harry was really set on avoiding confrontation, he was doing a terrible job in preventing it.

About a half hour later, Harry burst through the door, announcing that Voldemort was coming, and that they were fighting. Roxas didn’t stick around to find out anything more. He probably wouldn’t have been able to stay even if he’d wanted to. There were too many students pushing and shoving to get out.

But Roxas’ only mission was to find Axel, so the crowd was inconvenient only in the sense that it limited his visibility. The corridors were littered with Ravenclaws, Gryffindors, and Hufflepuffs, but the Slytherins all seemed to be missing.

Roxas racked his brain, trying to think of where the Slytherins would go if it were announced that there was going to be a battle at Hogwarts. His first thought was that they’d try to put as much distance between the castle and themselves as physically (or magically) possible. But there was no way out, not unless they used the Room of Requirement. And Roxas would have seen them pass through. Anyway, Roxas reasoned, even if they had all ditched, Axel wouldn’t. So where would he have gone?

“Come on, Roxas!”

Although the voice was not the one he searched for, Roxas welcomed it nonetheless. Sora, happy as ever and thankfully unharmed, was bounding towards him, Hayner Finnigan at his tail.

“Hayner! How did you get—“

“Seamus,” Hayner said shortly, waving his hand (which contained a gold galleon) impatiently. “We gotta get to Great Hall; McGonagall’s going over a battle plan. You should have seen it, Rox, Snape jumped out the _wind—“_

Hayner’s voice was drowned out by a cold, high pitched whisper, magnified to echo through the halls of Hogwarts as though its owner were only inches away. Roxas had never heard the voice before, but there wasn’t a single question as to who it belonged to.

“ _I know that you are preparing to fight. Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood.”_ There was a pause, and in it an enormous silence. There had to be a _but_ in there somewhere. “ _Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight.”_

His voice died away, and panic was beginning to rise among the students. Some, after hearing the voice of Voldemort, turned right around and marched right back into the Room of Requirement, presumably to escape back through the way they came. Roxas didn’t blame or resent them; hearing Voldemort in person inflicted a type of fear that not even the Carrows could replicate. Had he not been so hell bent on finding Axel, Roxas might have been among them.

“I can see Seamus!” Hayner cried happily. “Come on, let’s go!”

Sora and Roxas followed the brothers into the Great Hall, but by the time they got there, most of the students were already gone. Only those of age, it seemed, were allowed to stay. The Slytherin table was completely deserted, but Roxas could tell by the pushed out benches that they had been there since the house elves had tidied up after dinner.

McGonagall was standing at the headmaster’s podium, and was directing students to different parts of the castle. As the group approached her, Harry sprinted by, apparently off to do whatever he’d originally come to Hogwarts to do.

“Finnigans! If you could please join the Weasley twins in the third floor corridor,” McGonagall instructed briskly. Seamus and Hayner’s faces split into identical grins as they took off, wands drawn. “Strife, you would do well on the Astronomy Tower, Professor Flitwick—“

“Professor,” Roxas interrupted, “I’m sorry, please, I’m more than willing to stay and help, but I’ve got to find someone first. Where’s Slytherin House?”

McGonagall looked rather surprised and a little affronted. “Filch escorted them to an evacuation point on the seventh floor. Really, Roxas, I doubt any of them stuck around.”

“No, he would have left,” Roxas muttered, furious with himself for not just staying where Axel could have come to find him. “But I didn’t see them on the main staircase, do you know which way they went.

McGonagall scoffed. “This is Filch we’re talking about.” Her nostrils flared, a sign that Roxas had long ago learned to recognize as a loss of patience.

“…all right,” he said, giving up. “I’ll come back!” he shouted over his shoulder.

If Filch had taken the Slytherins through a secret passage or on some obscure route, and Axel had slipped away from the crowd, he could be anywhere in the castle by now. Midnight was approaching fast, and nobody seemed to be giving Harry up to Voldemort. He _had_ to get to Axel before it was too late. He just _had_ to.

~o~

Axel was faring no better than Roxas. It was nearly eleven o’clock when Professor Slughorn was shaking him awake, along with the other Slytherin boys in his dormitory. For one paralyzing moment, his body flooded with terror at being called back down into the dungeons with the Carrows. He jerked violently, causing Slughorn to startle as well.

“Merlin’s beard, I didn’t mean to scare you!” Slughorn apologized quickly.

“S’going on?” Demyx asked, flopping back down onto his four poster.

Now that he looked around, Axel decided that he wasn’t being called for a second interrogation after all. The rest of his peers were rousing as well, which meant that Slughorn wasn’t here specifically for him. Axel exhaled slowly, the way Madame Pomfrey had taught him to do if he felt that he might start going into a panic attack.

“The time has come,” said Slughorn. “He-who-must-not-be-named is coming to Hogwarts, and we must evacuate.”

“But he wouldn’t attack _us,_ would he?” Demyx piped up

Slughorn’s eyes flashed toward Axel, a regretful expression on his face. “It’s true that our house is known for only the purest of blood. But you-know-who isn’t going to stop and consider what color tie you have on. I don’t think even the heir of Slytherin himself would stand a chance against you-know-who on a night like this.”

“But what if we wanted to stay and _help_ him?” another boy asked.

“Pucey!” Slughorn exclaimed, aghast. “This is the _Dark Lord_ we’re talking about! You could be charged with conspiracy, with accessory to _murder_ for talking like that! I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that just this once, and _you_ will be first in line at the evacuation point.”

Axel gritted his teeth, but said nothing. He was used to the other kids talking like that. Some them, he knew for a fact, actually did have parents within you-know-who’s inner circle. But most of them were just big talkers.

“Now, follow me. You are not meant to be gathering any possessions, but I suppose… if you can keep up… well… best just follow me,” said Slughorn uncomfortably. “Ah, but make sure to change into travelling cloaks. I expect you all in the common room in two minutes.

Axel didn’t bother taking books or knick knacks, but he did bring his wand. Even if Hogwarts wasn’t on the verge of siege, Axel would never risk leaving his wand anywhere, not after his night with the Carrows. He wasn’t the only one; he could see Demyx trying to hide his unusually long wand within the sleeve of his cloak, and another boy putting his in his pant leg.

By the time Slytherin House arrived in the Great Hall, nearly the entire school was already there, but nowhere in the throng could Axel make out that familiar tuft of blonde hair.

A hot pain flashed suddenly against Axel’s leg. He lifted his robe aside to reveal a hole burned right through his pocket, and his D.A. galleon clinked to the floor. Having finally gained the attention of its owner, the coin was quite cool when Axel picked it up again. His eyes widened at the message. If Harry Potter was here, it meant revolution. And if Lord Voldemort was indeed on his way, then maybe, just _maybe,_ it would mean an end to this whole mess, the entire war.

His heart thumped heavily in excitement and fear. While it was true that hanging around in this miserable limbo was in no way pleasant, he’d at least had assurance that way that their side had not lost entirely. If Harry died tonight, there was a good change that the scales would tip to the point of no return. _But,_ if _Voldemort_ died tonight, the war would be won almost instantaneously. 

Axel didn’t have to wait long to see the message confirmed. He had only been scanning the room for a moment when his eyes fell on that lightning scar. As soon as he did so, the hall boomed with Voldemort’s request to hand Harry over. So it _was_ going to be tonight.

When the voice faded away, several low voices could be heard; students fearfully whispered to each other as though afraid that if they spoke too loudly, Voldemort might hear them.

“But he’s there! Potter’s _there!_ Someone grab him!” Pansy Parkinson shrieked.

Axel groaned out loud. Here was Slytherin House’s one chance to finally prove that they weren’t just one big bag of dicks, and Malfoy’s stinking girlfriend had to open her fat mouth and ruin it all in one shot.

In one massive movement, all three of the remaining houses stood to move between Pansy and Harry. Axel wished he could be standing among them, but he was too deep in the crowd to reach the other side in time to distinguish himself from the rest of the Slytherins.

 _And even if I could,_ Axel mused, _anybody who’s not involved in the D.A. would probably just assume that I’m after Harry._

The Slytherins were promptly escorted from the Great Hall after that. Apparently, extending the offer to stay and fight Voldemort was only a waste of time in the eyes of Professor McGonagall. Axel didn’t particularly disagree with her, but giving him the outright choice to stay would have saved him a whole lot of backtracking.

And so Axel was dragged back up over a half dozen staircases by tired, grumbling students. He was stuck in an unfortunate spot right in the very center of the crown, and, as if knowing he might try to cause trouble or otherwise disobey instructions, Professor Slughorn was marching only a few feet behind him.

When the Slytherins reached the corridor, they were not taken directly to the room of requirement, like Axel thought they’d be. They were deposited into a classroom.

“Please wait here while the details of the evacuation are worked out,” said Slughorn. “I leave the Prefects in charge.”

But the prefects didn’t really seem interested in taking charge, so Axel decided that now would probably be the best time to bail. Many students were weaving around the classroom, all trying to reunite with their friends and siblings, so it wouldn’t draw any attention if Axel began making his way towards the door. At least, that’s what he thought.

After some patient maneuvering, Axel had gotten himself close enough to the door to grab the handle. But before he could reach out to let himself out, a long, thin arm suddenly threw itself in his path, blocking the exit.

“Not so fast, Axel.”

The arm and voice both belonged to Axel’s former best friend, Demyx. The two had never necessarily had a falling out, but they had grown apart considerably since Axel had started seeing Roxas.

“What?” Axel said flatly. “Could you move please?”

Demyx did move, but in the wrong direction. He now leaned his entire body up against the door, blocking Axel’s path completely.

“Where are you going?” he asked with his arms crossed.

Axel snorted. Demyx could perform a meteojinx powerful enough to make it rain in the common room for hours, but he wasn’t exactly _dangerous._ Picture a bobcat trying to block the path of a coyote.

“What are you, my mom?” Axel challenged. “Get out of my way, Dem, I got shit to do.

His old friend didn’t budge. “You’re going to try to _fight,_ aren’t you?” he hissed. “You’re gonna go join your disgusting muggle friends and make sure that wizard kind has to stay in hiding forever, aren’t you?”

“Let me pass,” Axel growled.

Demyx drew his wand. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. We’re all _tired,_ Axe. Aren’t you tired? They’re a _lesser_ form of people, and they’ve been in power for too long. It’s time to step _forward,_ lead a revolution, and start steering humanity towards an all wizard race. _This?_ This is a step backwards for you. A betrayal of you own blood.”

Axel laughed out loud. “You’re gonna fight me? _You?_ I’ve seen you try the Cruciatus Curse on a mouse, you couldn’t even wake it up. You’re gonna duel me in the name of you-know-who? You’ve got a sister out there! She’s in the castle right now, preparing, and you want to stop me from helping her? Who’s really betraying their blood? You really want him to take over? You want your sister to die?”

A jet stream a water from Demyx’s wand missed Axel’s ear by a fraction of an inch, severing a small handful of hair at the crook of his neck. The spell gained the attention of the other students, but rather than joining either party, they all parted so as to not get hit by a curse.

As pissed off as he was, Axel still didn’t have any _real_ intentions of hurting Demyx. But he had to get him out of the way. Quickly juggling through spells, Axel roared, ” _Levicorpus!”_ but made the wand motion for a stunning spell. As a result, Demyx was blasted backwards, or he would have been had the door not been in the way. Instead, he slid up the door, then the wall, and knocked unconscious against the ceiling. He hovered eerily above the door.

“Anybody else!?” Axel demanded. “I’d rather it be here than out on the battlefield because I _promise_ I won’t be as nice!”

When nobody stepped up, Axel assumed them all to be spineless cowards. But he didn’t realize how truly frightening he looked. He was tall, taller than anyone else in the room, his bright red hair as wild as ever. His eyes blazed ferally, the only green he adorned, as he’d discarded his Slytherin badge and tie altogether. With an expression like that, and a fellow student, a friend, hanging ominously over his head, none of Axel’s classmates even considered crossing him.

With an exasperated sigh, Axel lowered his wand and stormed out of the room, leaving Demyx to fall in a crumpled heap between the rest of the Slytherins and the way out.

Siege had broken out in the time it took Axel to get away from his peers. As he sprinted in no direction in particular, he could see students and teachers grouped at windows. Most of them appeared to be aiming spells at the unseen ranks below. His path in the fourth floor corridor on the east wing was blocked by tentacular pods, but it didn’t matter; he had no direction and he and Roxas had thoroughly lost one another by now.

Like the walls around him, Axel’s morale was beginning to crumble. What if Roxas had left through the room of requirement, expecting to see Axel on the other side? Axel wasn’t one to believe Roxas to do anything so cowardly, or to expect _Axel_ to have done, either. But now that he was scurrying through the shaking castle, dodging jinxes every now and then from the forces outside, the idea that Roxas had left him to head for safety was fast becoming a comfort.

Axel decided to go to the entrance hall and work his way up. Even though there were a handful of corridors per floor and a maze of staircases, he figured that taking direct route to major parts of the castle was his best bet.

But when he arrived at the entrance hall, it had been bombarded so heavily it was nearly beyond recognition. All of the iron suits of armor had gone, perhaps to help out in battle, or perhaps to flee and save their own metallic loins. At least half of the columns had crumbled, and bits of the ceiling lay in dusty graves on the floor. Only Neville, and another elderly witch remained to support the enchantments keeping the vast structure together.

“Neville!” Axel blurted. He had never been so pleased to see the round faced boy in his life.

Neville didn’t turn around, presumably to keep maximum concentration on his spellwork. But he _did_ reply, “Is that Axel? Did McGonagall send you and Roxas to help us out?”

“Sorry, no,” said Axel, feeling guilty for not being more helpful to anyone. “I’m actually still looking for Roxas. Do you have any idea where I might be able to find him?”

“Last I saw of him he was running around looking for _you._ I think he went up the main staircase, though.” He paused his spell for a moment, turning around to look Axel sincerely in the eye. “I really hope you find him, man.”

His tone wasn’t necessarily encouraging, but Axel was flooded with relief. He now knew that Roxas was still in the school, and they were both looking for each other. Neville had seen him fairly recently, and Axel’s original plan to find him on a direct path may just hold.

“Thanks a lot,” Axel said honestly. “For everything you’ve done for me, Roxas, and everybody else too. If I see any D.A. members, I’ll send them you way, alright?”

Neville grinned, and held his hand out for Axel to shake. If this was to be their last encounter (and both boys were assuming it would be), Axel was glad it was on these terms. He was remembering their first day on the Hogwarts Express, and he was sure Neville was too.

Axel gripped Neville’s hand and shook. Neither of them knew it, but for the first time in many centuries, the bond between Gryffindor and Slytherin had been restored.

As Axel ran from the hall, the coin he’d now been keeping in his sock burned for the second time that night. He knew it couldn’t have been from Neville. There simply wasn’t time for the modification to have been made. The message in the serial number was quite a bit longer this time:

BANSHEE BANTERING BY BARNABUS

 _Barnabus the Smarmy!_ Axel realized with excitement. The statue he and Roxas had accidentally turned into an ice sculpture in their second year! That _had_ to be Roxas.

Axel once again broke into a sprint. He would join the fray wholeheartedly, once he and Roxas were together.

~o~

Roxas’ chosen spot of rendezvous wasn’t exactly the wisest, but it was the most prominent and easy to recognize spot he could think of. However, it was only one corridor away from the Death Eaters’ first point of penetration. He knew ambush was imminent, but he stayed put.

From his spot in the corridor, he could see some of the action going on nearby. A small group of men had managed to climb into the castle through the window, and were advancing on the ranks standing guard. One man had lingered behind, perhaps to watch the window. If Roxas could just stun him…

“ _Stupefy,”_ he whispered.

The perfectly executed spell jetted out from Roxas’ wand at the exact moment that the Death Eater turned his head to scratch at an ear. Alerted now to Roxas’ presence, he charged.

Roxas thought he may have recognized the man’s face from the daily prophet, but it didn’t really matter. There wasn’t time for that now. The guy, though built like a tank, was _fast._ Curse after ruthless curse he aimed at Roxas, getting closer all the while. Roxas, while able to block each spell with shaking hands, simply didn’t have the time to perform any offensive magic of his own.

“ _Protego! Protego! **Protego!!** Expelliarmus!” _he cried frantically. He successfully disarmed his opponent, but at a cost. The last curse hit him full blast, causing painful red sores to burst out over his hands and neck. The Death Eater retrieved his wand a moment later, but Roxas was unable to grip his own wand properly.

Kicking ferociously, Roxas scurried into a corner, but it was no use. He’d sacrificed the use of his wand for the wrong spell, and now he was going to die here. Next to that goddamn sneering statue that he’d always hated so much. Axel never knew, but Roxas had picked that spot to duel on purpose, with hopes that they’d be able to damage it somehow. All he could do now was cower next to it, holding his hands above his head protectively as the Death Eater raised his wand.

“ _No! Bombarda!”_

The explosive jinx struck the Death Eater so hard and so directly that he was blasted right through the stone wall, leaving a vaguely man-shaped hole in his wake. Roxas turned his body frantically to see whether his savior was friend or foe. It was entirely possible that the jinx had been meant for him.

“Axel?” he choked in relief.

It _was_ Axel, and he was clearing the space between them quickly. Without missing a beat, Axel skidded to his knees and pulled Roxas into a tight hug.

“I found you…” Axel murmured. He was shaking. “Damn it, Roxas, what if I hadn’t found you?”

“It’s okay,” Roxas said, repeating himself occasionally. “Everything’s fine, we’re fine. Come on, you big baby, we still have work to do.”

When they let go and stood up, Axel kissed Roxas on the forehead. Roxas tried not to smile. He failed.

“Here,” Axel murmured gently, gingerly taking hold of Roxas’ injured hands. He muttered a few quick spells, and Roxas’ open sores drained themselves and closed. With another quick swish, loose bandages materialized and wrapped themselves around Roxas’ hands delicately. Axel kissed both of them, too.

“That’ll have to do for now,” he said sadly.

It was more than enough. Roxas could grip his wand properly again and the pain had become much less distracting now that the wounds were not so tender. He began leading Axel back towards the Great Hall, going into detail about how Harry had shown up out of the blue and accidently started a war, and that McGonagall needed them and so on, but Axel seemed distracted.

Granted, there were plenty of reasons to be distracted. Stone gargoyles that had once stood guard high on the walls now lie crumpled in broken heaps on the floor. Windows everywhere were shattering or had already shattered. Jets of light from flyaway spells rebounded through the corridors every so often, and scared teenagers ran by, calling for their friends and loved ones.

These were the same walls that Axel and Roxas had moseyed through, half asleep, on their way to their first classes of the day. The same walls that, all the way through till their fourth year (and sometimes even after, just for sport), they had dueled in. Even though the school had seen its fair share of danger in their time, something about the warm, fire-lit corridors made Roxas feel protected. And now they could very well be his grave.      

“Axe? Babe? What’s wrong?” Roxas asked, now wishing he could find a distraction himself. “I mean, I know we’re in the middle of a war and everything, but I mean, besides the obvious.”

Axel hesitated, as though he were thinking over his words very carefully. “That guy…” he said finally, motioning behind him to the hole in the rubble at the end of the corridor. “D’you think… do you think he’s dead?”

Both of them knew the answer, and Roxas knew that Axel had only asked to temporarily postpone that certainty. As if saying it of the form of a question would shroud it in ambiguity, keep Axel in the grey.

Roxas was having none of it. Not today. They had too much to lose.

“He was trying to kill me,” Roxas said firmly. “He willingly took part in an attack on a school which, as far as he knew, was full mostly of innocent kids. I _hope_ so.”

“But Rox I—I _killed him!_ ” Axel exclaimed. “I killed a _person._ I didn’t even think about it! I just saw him, and I saw you, and I panicked, and—“

“I forgive you, all right?” said Roxas, “It’s not like we’re out on some random muggle street, okay? We’re in battle, and you did the right thing.”

~o~

In the time it had taken for Roxas to leave the Great Hall, find Axel, and return, Professor McGonagall’s hair had fallen from its tight bun for the first time in student memory, and there were tied up Death Eaters here and there, leaving a bread crumb trail to her position. She and the other teachers were apparently doing all they could to ensure that the protective enchantments around the castle continued to function.

When she saw Axel and Roxas, her expression became nothing short of livid.

“Strife!” she barked, drawing herself up to full height and rounding on him. “What did you think you were doing, running off like that on your own!? Nobody knew where you went, you could have been killed! If Hogwarts is still running after this, you’re going to be in detention until you _graduate.”_

“It’s all right, Professor,” said Roxas brightly. “A Death Eater got in through the North wall, so Axel blasted him through two layers of stone. We _think_ he’s probably dead.”

McGonagall stood quietly, mulling over what she’d heard with an expression somewhere between confusion and mild shock. “Ahh, well… fifty points to Slytherin,” she stuttered. Roxas couldn’t tell for sure, but he could have sworn she sounded impressed. “You boys would do well on the Astronomy Tower, I think.”

“Thanks Professor,” Roxas said, grinning.

“And for goodness’ sake, stick together!” she called after them.

Roxas wasn’t sure what he was so happy about. It could have been the adrenaline, he supposed, or the fact that nobody seemed to be concerned about him towing around an overgrown Slytherin around anymore. Maybe he was just pleased because for the first time, finally, he could fight back.

~o~

Hours came and went, and over time, the glee of the battle dissipated as the Death Eaters infiltrated the castle completely. The once protective walls of Hogwarts had transformed into a battleground, and they weren’t winning. More than once they’d been forced to pass over the corpse of a fellow student. Neither of them had really expected the duels to end in death. Roxas noticed that Axel was considerably less reserved about taking down Death Eaters after that.

At first, they’d kept to the Astronomy tower, as McGonagall instructed. From the high perch, they and a small group of other students were able to stun, paralyze, or otherwise curse Death Eaters approaching over the grounds or the walls. It also worked out nicely because there was only one door in or out.

It was easier work than Roxas ever would have guessed. He had a very wide view of both the castle roof and the grounds below, and probably could have achieved the same thing throwing stones, to be honest. A simple stunning curse was enough to permanently incapacitate those who were attempting to climb, and a good full body bind kept those on the ground still long enough to magically tie up or handcuff them.

Not everyone on the tower was as kind to them as Roxas. Professor Flitwick often sent them hurtling into the forbidden forest, and Ernie MacMillan actually used the killing curse on the Death Eaters that had murdered his cousins. There was a strange sort of solidarity to it.

But it didn’t take long for the pile of unconscious and/or dead enemies to grow conspicuous. The trail of bodies drew more attention to them than they could handle. As more Death Eaters made it up the stairs and onto the observatory, they were forced to flee.

“Take my hand!” Axel shouted as they sprinted down the spiral stairs three at a time, ducking and dodging an array of curses of an imaginative variety.

“Are you _mad!?”_ Roxas bickered back, swearing as he nearly lost his footing. “We’re fighting a _war!_ You kind of need to keep your wand out!”

Axel aimed a jinx high above his head and shot it over his shoulder. They couldn’t stay to see if it found a target, but a moment after firing, a loud blast and a high-pitched shriek sounded from above. Roxas decided he didn’t want to know which spell Axel had chosen. He wanted to remember as little of this as possible.

“Left-handed, baby, got it memorized!?” Axel replied gleefully. “Surprised you never noticed before, to be—“

He was interrupted by a deafening _bang_ as the door at the base of the staircase bust open, revealing somebody… not quite human.

Roxas, having been raised in a muggle environment, had never seen the man before and kept his wand at the ready as though he were facing any other opponent. Axel , however, had been taught to recognize and fear that face a long, long time ago. Axel and Roxas stood face to face with the ruthless, child-biting werewolf, Fenrir Greyback.

Axel knew that Greyback would rely on the paralyzing shock of his victims to fabricate an attack. Without hesitation, he thundered, “ _Stupefy!”_ blasting Greyback off his feet in an instant.

“Come on,” he said quickly, shoving a dazed Roxas in the back as a way of telling him to get a move on. “That won’t keep a werewolf down for long.”

He was right. As Axel was running by, Greyback’s hand shot out like a viper, taking ahold of the hem of Axel’s pants. His strength was no match. Axel was pulled to the ground in one yank. Feral, inhuman claws ripped Axel’s shirt down as the wolf, still in his monstrous human form, crawled over Axel so as to get closer to his neck.

Roxas had just now noticed that Axel was not right behind him, and was beginning to double back.

“Roxas…!” Axel coughed; his breath had been knocked out of him when Greyback took him to the ground. “ _Rox, go!”_

A set of teeth sank deeply into the part where Axel’s shoulder merged with his neck. Greyback had stricken directly over a nerve, probably by design. Axel’s right up spasmed reflexively, then went still.

“Oh, I don’t _think_ so,” Roxas snapped, rearing up on Greyback. His expression was murderous. It was the same one he used to wear when they dueled in the hallways, when he lost the Quidditch match that decided he’d be going to the ball with Axel. The same one he wore when Axel caught him writing that list in the room of requirement. That, Axel thought, is the last face that I would like to see.

_“Avada Kedavra!”_

A jet of green light, that spell that neither of them had ever _dared_ to try and use, burst from Roxas’ wand and hit Greyback on the back of the head. He flew off Axel immediately and slid until his head cracked on the lowest step to the astronomy tower.

“Don’t you dare tell me to leave you behind again,” Roxas hissed, hoisting Axel to his feet.

~o~

It was over. They’d lost. It had been less than an hour since Voldemort had called off his ranks, and it was already over. Here Roxas was, doubled over from the shock and silenced by Voldemort’s spell.

 _All this,_ Roxas thought, _A whole ministry, a whole **society** of wizards to their knees, because we can’t kill one guy. It’s not exactly like he’s **hiding.** Any old muggle could walk right up to him and shoot him in the face. Merlin’s beard, we’re fucking useless._

Then it happened. Roxas didn’t see it directly, there were too many people. The Boy Who Lived sprung to life once again. One moment he lie limp in Hagrid’s arms, the next he stood, facing the greatest enemy wizardkind had ever known. They had another _chance._

It was impossible for Roxas to hear what Harry was shouting; a great eruption of cheers and applause had arisen from all those present in the entrance hall. At the same time, shouts, jeers, and cries of shock and disdain came from Voldemort’s followers. Nobody made a move to touch either of them. It was like everybody had _known,_ all along, that it would come to this.

Harry and Voldemort circled one another, talking. How Harry had faked his death right under the thumb of the dark lord was unexplainable, lost even to Voldemort himself. His impossibly red eyes were wide and blazing, his expression manic as he demanded, loudly enough for everyone to hear, why his magic wasn’t working.

Unlike Voldemort, Harry was calm and composed, and so his response was not loud enough for Roxas to make out.

And then they were dueling. Roxas’ heart thumped as heavily in his chest as it ever had, the anticipation ripping through him. What if Harry lost this fight as well? Had brought all their hopes back up for nothing?

Really, Roxas considered, Harry’s army was so much bigger than Voldemort’s. Couldn’t they all just aim for him at once and utter the spell? Would that work? Roxas was prepared to try it if he could.

But he didn’t have to. Both Harry and Voldemort tried to curse one another and their spells connected. Roxas had never seen anything like it. It looked more like a battle of souls than a battle of magic. Harry’s wand vibrated so hard his entire arm shook, but the dark lord’s was doing the same. It was his spell that seemed to be winning, and then it rebounded all at once.

Voldemort was hit in the chest by his own spell. He dropped to the ground as though he were a puppet whose strings had been cut. There was no dramatic exit, no cry of defeat, no explosion of dark magic. When it all came down to it, Tom Riddle was just a man, and the man was dead.

Silence boomed through the entrance hall as it dawned on everybody just like _that,_ that the dark lord was no more.

And then the silence ended, and there was a cacophony of celebration, the likes of which had never been heard at Hogwarts before, nor shall ever be heard again.

Some of the Death Eaters were furious. Others looked quite insane. But most of them, almost unsurprisingly, looked relieved.

Roxas did nothing but laugh, and laugh and laugh and whoop and crow. For a long time, he couldn’t stop. He would have cried, but he was simply too dehydrated, too happy, too buzzed. The laughter, like tears, began abruptly, and were quite out of Roxas’ control.

Axel was jumping up and down, one hand raised high in the air, the other kept on his side. Despite the excitement, he’d at least had the good sense not to raise his bad arm and risk tearing open his sloppily created stiches.

Then as though pushed by a force of gravity, the two moved at the same time to kiss the other. It didn’t matter that everyone was there, or that they weren’t out yet. All that mattered to Roxas was that Axel was still there, still alive. That he was still able to gently cup Roxas’ neck as he was doing, that he could still press soft kisses to Roxas’ mouth as he was doing, as though he was the most treasured thing on the planet.

It didn’t matter, because things weren’t black and white anymore. Axel and Roxas weren’t a Slytherin and a Gryffindor anymore, muggleborn and pureblood, or even boy and boy. They were simply people, and could finally be recognized as such.

Hogwarts was finally at peace.


End file.
